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    philanthropist , it has seemed to create a purer atmosphere around , and redeemed many a rnomenjt from the common-place routine of mere matter-of-fact existence . To catch a glimpse of any one of these deified portions of humanity in the streets , has been sufficient to make the heart beat with doubled motion , and many a time has served to refresh the tired feet and send them on their

    way rejoicing . And when Fortune has been so dear a friend as to bring the chance of seeing them face to face , —of hearing them speak , perchance , —of having a word or look that one might appropriate , ( selfish this , but so it has been , )—the head has grown dizzy at the thought , ' and has revelled in anticipation as blessed as must have been that of an ancient mythologist at the thought of a banquet with the gods . It was during a worshipful time like

    this , upon a bright sunshiny spring morning , worthy such an announcement , that a friend said , Come to me next Tuesday , I am going to Charles Lamb ' s—Coleridge is to be there—and you shall go with me . ' My heart was 6 n its knees the next minute , and for the two or three intervening days I trod on air ; I lived in a dream of some coming good , at times mingled with the fear lest it should never arrive . It was not to see these objects of worship in a crowd , where I might , perchance , hear a word , or catch a

    glimpse , as one does at the prime picture of an exhibition , between the chinks of people ' s bodies , but to see them for hours uninterruptedly ; to see them in the character of friends to each other , when there would be no influence of the world upon them ; to watch them , listen to them , without losing look or word ; to see Coleridge with the < Charles' of his sonnets , and the ' Mary '

    of his songs ; to fill one ' s ears with the heart's talk of two poets , so much the purer for its being uncontaminated by the desire for fame . The time came nearer and nearer , and at last the very day , and I called for my kind pleasure purveyor , and we walked together to the well-remembered quaint-looking house by the canal , which had seen so many worthy of note pass along its banks , and , alas for the absent , one walk into itself instead , —one

    of the generation who , in their moods of abstraction , ' know not their right hand from their left , ' nor unstable water from terra firmd . Rap at the door , with the heart beating quite as strongly ; open- —in—speaking in a whisper as if we had entered a cathedral . How difficult is it to give a faithful record of past impressions ! Since those days , old things have passed away , and all things are become new . ' I am not the same I that I was then ,

    and the two I ' s encounter on the way and stare at one another in strange bewilderment . It is not with the facts themselves , but with the inferences drawn—iVom those facts , that change has been so busy . How he came , or when he came , or whether they were there when we entered , is all forgotten ; but I have them distinctly before me as if it were yesterday . Coleridge , with his clear , calm , blue eyes and expansive forehead ,- —his sweet , child-like , unruffled

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    An Evening with Ch&rk * Lamb and Coleridge * 163

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    N 2

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1835, page 163, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2643/page/19/