LAMB, Charles, English poet, critic and essayist: b. The Temple, London, 10 Feb. 1775; d. Edmonton, England, 27 Dec. 1834. Lamb was the youngest of three surviving children. among seven, of John Lamb, a clerk in the Inner Temple, and Elizabeth [Field] Lamb. Both parents were of humble and rural origin. Charles passed the first seven years of his life in the Temple, where he received some instruc tion, and in 1782 went to Christ's Hospital, where he remained the next seven years. Here he met his life-long friend and counsellor, S. T. Coleridge (q.v.). Lamb was known as a gentle and boy, whose natural shyness and sensitiveness were increased by a trick of stam mering, of which he never succeeded in com pletely ridding himself. Aside from these traits, there is to be noted the strain of mania in Lamb's family which in the boy expresses itself as excitability and nervousness. Other important determinants in Lamb's career were the influence of Coleridge, which tended to de velop thoughtfulness and a love of poetry, his own liking for early English authors, particu larly the Elizabethans, and his genuine and un failing delight in the life of the Though a fair scholar at school, Lamb was really more of a reader, and his reading had a great effect on his literary career and the quality of his work.
Shortly after leaving Christ's Hospital, Lamb entered the South Sea House. In 1791 he got a clerkship in the East India Company at 170 and there remained, with gradual in crease in salary, until he was retired in 1825, on a pension of f441. From the time he en tered business to his death, his life was singu larly uneventful. The critical year, 1795-96, was marked by his father's falling into imbe cility, his own solitary attack of mania, and (September 1796) his sister's stabbing of their mother in a fit of insanity. The nature of the hereditary complaint and his sister's need of a guardian determined his mode of life. He turned his back on an inchoate love affair, put aside all thought of marriage and devoted him self to his sister, as she to him in her sane mo ments. In 1797, on the death of their father, the two began their long life in London, un broken except for one short trip to Paris. In
the period their local home was changed but six times.
Lamb began his literary career in 1797 by the addition of three sonnets to a volume of Coleridge's. His poetical production was small; altogether during the course of his life his known poems number about 110, of which the best known are 'The Old Familiar Faces,' and (On an Infant Dying as Soon as Born.' In 1798 he wrote Gray and Old Blind Margaret,' a prose tale of sen timent. Though praised by Shelley and others for a charm that it undoubtedly possesses, the story, as a composition, is very incoherent and shows the writer's lack of technical skill. Structural defects equally great, because of lack of adequate motive in characterization, abound in Lamb's next attempt, 'John Wood vil,' a very undramatic drama, which was re fused by Kemble in 1799 and published by Lamb in 1802. Nor was Lamb's third attempt at imaginative literature more successful: the farCe, H.,' ran one night in 1806 and is probably one of the least dramatic pieces ever put on any stage. The truth of the matter is that Lamb had very little constructive ability in narrative and dramatic forms, that his attempts in them were due to the influence of the early dramatists, of whose work he was very fond and whose vogue he did much, later, to restore. His liking for them rested on their poetry rather than their dramatic ability.
In the next kind of work that he took up, Lamb had much better success. These were stories retold and they stand in three chief volumes,