Excerpt from Tales From Shakespeare
The delightful little book, called Tales from Shakespeare, and published more than seventy-five years ago, was written by a brother and his sister, Charles and Mary Lamb. Their personal and literary lives are of singular interest and of the sweetest and gentlest heroism. Mary Lamb, the sister, was eleven years older than her brother, having been born in 1764. Charles Lamb, the brother, the genial essayist and critic, was born in London in 1775. His parents were in humble station, but managed to give their son a fair education. At the age of seven, he entered the school of Christ Hospital, where he remained till he was fourteen. Among his friends at this school was Coleridge, with whom he formed a life-long friendship. In 1793, Lamb obtained an appointment in the India House, where he remained till 1825, when he was allowed to retire on a pension. Thus for all these long years Charles Lamb was a hard-worked clerk, and faithfully and patiently did he discharge the tedious duties of his position. In the year 1792, a terrible calamity befell his family. His sister Mary, a woman of the most estimable and amiable disposition, became suddenly insane, and in a frenzy grasped a knife and stabbed her mother to the heart. This event affected the whole life of Lamb. He gave up all thought of marriage, and thenceforth devoted his life to his beloved sister. She was ever afterward subject to fits of insanity; but when these attacks were over, she was a clever woman and a charming companion. "She was the only object between him and God," says Barry Cornwall, "and out of that misery and desolation sprung that wonderful love between brother and sister, which has no parallel in history." Mary, the "Bridget" of his essays, became his housekeeper. Their humble home was a favorite resort of many distinguished men of the time who have recorded their deep affection for the gifted brother and his gentle sister. Hard and dreary as was his daily life, Charles Lamb found time to read and re-read the great English prose-writers and dramatists, particularly of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He so saturated his mind with much reading of these old authors, that his style has a peculiar and subtle charm. A certain quaintness and antiquity became the natural garb of his thoughts. Lamb is best known by his Essays of Elia, writings full of quaint humor and tender pathos. These essays, signed "Elia," were contributed to various London periodicals, between the years 1820 and 1833.
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