The name of Charles Lamb will naturally suggest itself. Of him one would fain observe silence in this connection. He must at any rate speak for himself: ‘A small eater but not drinker.’ He acknowledges a partiality for the production of the juniper. This would probably prepossess Hazlitt, who observes in his _Thoughts and Maxims_: ‘We like a convivial character better than an abstemious one, because the idea of conviviality in the first instance is pleasanter than that of sobriety.’ Lamb considered it a great qualification in his father that he made punch better than any man of his degree in England. C. Lamb was a schoolfellow of S. T. Coleridge, and something more--a friend, not of a day, but of a life. Severed during the University career of the Lake poet, the friendship was maintained by occasional visits of the latter to town, where at the _Salutation and Cat_, they supped, heard the midnight chimes, and possibly heard the clock strike one several times, in the little smoky room now historical. More than twenty years passed, and Lamb is found dedicating his works, then first collected, to the same old friend. Meantime, countless letters pass between them; on Lamb’s part the lower side of the convivial blending too freely with the literary. Does he anticipate a visit to his friend? The joy is infinitely heightened by the prospect of the tavern and the ‘egg-hot.’ Nor does he blush to confess ‘I am writing at random, and half tipsy.’ In his _The Old Familiar Faces_, he writes:-- I have been laughing, I have been carousing, Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom-cronies, All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. Reference need not be made to that terribly tragical dissertation in his incomparable _Essays of Elia_, entitled _The Confessions of a Drunkard_. The passage which begins: ‘The waters have gone over me, but out of the dark depths could I be heard, I would cry out to all those who have set foot on that perilous flood,’ is familiar to most lovers of literature. But whether the dismal language is the mirror of his own experience, may remain a moot point. However, facts contradict the assertion of Barry Cornwall, that ‘much injustice has been done to Lamb, by accusing him of excess in drinking,’ and Hazlitt was perfectly justified in unequivocally stating what he had taken scrupulous pains to verify. Thus much admitted, we may endorse the sentiment expressed so feelingly:-- We admire his genius; we love the kind nature which appears in all his writings; and we cherish his memory as much as if we had known him personally.[227]