SOURCE: Zall, P. M. “Epitaph for George Dyer.” Charles Lamb Bulletin 5 (January 1974): 104-09.

In the following essay, Zall explains how Dyer learned benevolence firsthand, overcoming his own working-class heritage through charitable aid, and by watching his mentor, Robert Robinson, preach to the rural poor.

If the essence of an immortal comic hero is a compound of humor, irony, and pathos, George Dyer should live forever. From his shrine in Elia's pantheon he still sheds his grace across the years—reaching for his hat but picking up the coal scuttle, sparkling in conversation with the bust of Diana in mistake for Anna Letitia Barbauld, striding directly out the Lambs' door into the New River. Dyerana still unfit for print could add much more—how, confronting a two-hole loo for the first time, he assumes the holes are meant to accommodate one's legs and sits accordingly. What true Elian cannot...