Speaking of Lamb’s sister Mary, Procter quoted Hazlitt’s saying that “Mary Lamb was the most rational and wisest woman he had ever been acquainted with.”  As we went along some of the more retired streets in the old city, we had also, I remember, much gossip about Coleridge and his manner of reciting his poetry, especially when “Elia” happened to be among the listeners, for the philosopher put a high estimate upon Lamb’s critical judgment.  The author of “The Ancient Mariner” always had an excuse for any bad habit to which he was himself addicted, and he told Procter one day that perhaps snuff was the final cause of the human nose.  In connection with Coleridge we had much reminiscence of such interesting persons as the Novellos, Martin Burney, Talfourd, and Crabb Robinson, and a store of anecdotes in which Haydon, Manning, Dyer, and Godwin figured at full length.  In course of conversation I asked my companion if he thought Lamb had ever been really in love, and he told me interesting things of Hester Savory, a young Quaker girl of Pentonville, who inspired the poem embalming the name of Hester forever, and of Fanny Kelly, the actress with “the divine plain face,” who will always live in one of “Elia’s” most exquisite essays.  “He had a reverence for the sex,” said Procter, “and there were tender spots in his heart that time could never entirely cover up or conceal.”

During our walk we stepped into Christ’s Hospital, and turned to the page on its record book where together we read this entry:  “October 9, 1782, Charles Lamb, aged seven years, son of John Lamb, scrivener, and Elizabeth his wife.”

It was a lucky morning when I dropped in to bid “good morrow” to the poet as I was passing his house one day, for it was then he took from among his treasures and gave to me an autograph letter addressed to himself by Charles Lamb in 1829.  I found the dear old man alone and in his library, sitting at his books, with the windows wide open, letting in the spring odors.  Quoting, as I entered, some lines from Wordsworth embalming May mornings, he began to talk of the older poets who had worshipped nature with the ardor of lovers, and his eyes lighted up with pleasure when I happened to remember some almost forgotten stanza from England’s “Helicon.”  It was an easy transition from the old bards to “Elia,” and he soon went on in his fine enthusiastic way to relate several anecdotes of his eccentric friend.  As I rose to take leave he said,—­

“Have I ever given you one of Lamb’s letters to carry home to America?”

“No,” I replied, “and you must not part with the least scrap of a note in ‘Elia’s’ handwriting.  Such things are too precious to be risked on a sea-voyage to another hemisphere.”

“America ought to share with England in these things,” he rejoined; and leading me up to a sort of cabinet in the library, he unlocked a drawer and got out a package of time-stained papers.  “Ah,” said he, as he turned over the golden leaves, “here is something you will like to handle.”  I unfolded the sheet, and lo! it was in Keats’s handwriting, the sonnet on first looking into Chapman’s Homer.  “Keats gave it to me,” said Procter, “many, many years ago,” and then he proceeded to read, in tones tremulous with delight, these undying lines:—­