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1. Charles Lamb
Life:
Charles Lamb (1775-1834),
English essayist and poet, most famous for his collection Essays of Elia
(1823, 1833). The poem “The Old Familiar Faces” and the essay “Dream
Children” are among his most popular works.
Lamb was born in London on February 10, 1775. He studied at
Christ’s Hospital where he formed a lifelong friendship with Samuel Taylor
Coleridge. When he was twenty years old Lamb suffered a period of insanity.
His sister, Mary Ann Lamb, had similar problems and in 1796 murdered her
mother in a fit of madness. Mary was confined to an asylum but was
eventually released into the care of her brother.
Lamb became friends in London with a group of young writers
who favored political reform including Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt
and Leigh Hunt. In 1796 Lamb contributed four sonnets to Coleridge’s
Poems on Various Subjects (1796). This was followed by Blank Verse
(1798) and Pride’s Cure (1802).
Tales from Shakespeare (1807), which he wrote in
collaboration with his sister, and The Adventures Of Ulysses (1808)
were valuable retellings of classic works for children. Lamb’s critical
comments in Specimens of English Dramatic poets who lived about
the time of Shakespeare (1808) are among the classics of English
criticism.
Lamb worked for the East India Company in London for 33 years
but managed to contribute articles to several journals and newspapers
including the London Magazine, The Morning Chronicle, The Morning Post
and The Quarterly Review.
The works of Lamb divided themselves naturally into three
groups written in three different periods. In the first period which was
before 1803, he mainly wrote poems on various subjects. He also wrote a
sentimental romance Rosamund Gray and a poetical drama John
Woodvil. The second period was devoted largely to literary criticism.
Tales from Shakespeare, which may be regarded as his first successful
literary venture, was produced in this period. The tragedies were produced
by Charles and the comedies by his sister Mary Lamb. In 1808 he published
his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare.
This book offers the reader much information about Elizabethan poets. It had
noticeable influence on the poetic creations of Keats. In the third period,
Lamb wrote a series of essays which are collected in his Essays of Elia
and Last Essays of Elia. Elia is his penname, which he borrowed from
an old clerk with whom he had worked in the South Sea House. The two
collections consist of more than fifty essays, in which Lamb chats with the
reader on various topics. A great number of his essays are concerned with
the Author’s personal reminiscences. He wrote about his childhood, his
school days, and his family, such as “Christ’s Hospital Five and Thirty
Years Ago and Old China”. Some of the essays describe the author’s whimsies
and fantasies, like The Dissertation upon Roast Pig and Dream
Children. The subjects are diverse. In a word he wrote about English
society of his age, especially about the life of London.
Charles Lamb died on 29 December 1834.
Essays
His real fame came in 1820, when he began to contribute his
Essays of Elia to the London Magazine. Under the pseudonym of an Italian
clerk named Elia, Lamb wrote about a wide rage variety of subjects.
From 1800 on he wrote intermittently for periodicals, the major
contribution being the famous Essays of Elia ( London Magazine,
1820-25), which were collected in 1823 and 1833. Elia, the narrator, was a
whimsical and the eccentric. The essays are not reliable autobiographical.
But readers can find some traces of his real life. The essays cover a
variety of subjects and maintain throughout an intimate and familiar tone.
When writing an assay mourning for his deceased brother, Lamb wrote:
“… I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first,
but afterward it haunted and haunted me, and thought I did not cry or take
it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done it I had died, yet
u missed him all day long, and know not till then how much I have loved him.
I missed his kindness, and I missed him all day long, and knew not till then
how much I have loved him…”
Lamb’s style is peculiarly his own. His close-knit, subtle
organization, his self-revealing observations on life, and his humor,
fantasy, and pathos combine to make him one of the great masters of the
English essay. Lamb was a gifted conversationalist and was friendly with
most of the major literary figures of his time.
The most striking feature of his essays is his humor. Charles
Lamb is a humorist and a master of puns and jokes, which around in his
essays. Lamb was especially fond of old writers. He borrowed much from them.
His writings are full of archaisms. His essays are intensely personal. There
are an excellent picture of Lamb and humanity. His essays are marked by
relaxed style, conversational tone and wide range of subject matter. Lamb
was a Romanticist. But his Romanticism is different from that of Wordsworth,
who was the Romanticist of nature; Lamb was the Romanticist of the city.
Wordsworth drew inspirations from the mountains and lakes while Lamb’s
imagination was inspired by the busy life of London.
To most modern readers Lamb’s essays are too
sentimental and too teasing, and sometimes are too archaic in vocabulary and
expression. But because of his sensitive voice, his humane spirit, and his
perceptive arguments, his essays remain popular. His best known essays
include Christ’s Hospital, A Dissertation on Roast Pig, and Old
China. His literary criticism was thin in volume. However, his unique
perspective made him a good critic. He was the first to announce that
William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey and Coleridge’s The Rime of
Ancient Mariner are the two masterpieces in Lyrical Ballads.
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