“We have been favored, by the kindness of Mr. Upcott, with the following sketch, written in one of his manuscript collections, by Charles Lamb.  It will be read with deep interest by all, but with the deepest interest by those who had the honor and the happiness of knowing the writer.  It is so singularly characteristic, that we can scarcely persuade ourselves we do not hear it, as we read, spoken from his living lips.  Slight as it is, it conveys the most exquisite and perfect notion of the personal manner and habits of our friend.  For the intellectual rest, we lift the veil of its noble modesty, and can even here discern them.  Mark its humor, crammed into a few thinking words,—­its pathetic sensibility in the midst of contrast,—­its wit, truth, and feeling,—­and, above all, its fanciful retreat at the close under a phantom cloud of death.”

CHARLES LAMB’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

“Charles Lamb, born in the Inner Temple, 10th February, 1775; educated in Christ’s Hospital; afterwards a clerk in the Accountants’ Office, East-India House; pensioned off from that service, 1825, after thirty-three years’ service; is now a gentleman at large;—­can remember few specialties in his life worth noting, except that he once caught a swallow flying (teste sua manu).  Below the middle stature; cast of face slightly Jewish, with no Judaic tinge in his complexional religion; stammers abominably, and is therefore more apt to discharge his occasional conversation in a quaint aphorism or a poor quibble than in set and edifying speeches; has consequently been libelled as a person always aiming at wit, which, as he told a dull fellow that charged him with it, is at least as good as aiming at dulness.  A small eater, but not drinker; confesses a partiality for the production of the juniper-berry; was a fierce smoker of tobacco, but may be resembled to a volcano burnt out, emitting only now and then a casual puff.  Has been guilty of obtruding upon the public a tale in prose, called ’Rosamund Gray,’—­a dramatic sketch, named ’John Woodvil,’—­a ’Farewell Ode to Tobacco,’—­with sundry other poems, and light prose matter, collected in two slight crown octavos, and pompously christened his works, though in fact they were his recreations, and his true works may be found on the shelves of Leadenhall Street, filling some hundred folios.  He is also the true Elia, whose essays are extant in a little volume, published a year or two since, and rather better known from that name without a meaning than from anything he has done, or can hope to do, in his own.  He also was the first to draw the public attention to the old English dramatists, in a work called ’Specimens of English Dramatic Writers who lived about the Time of Shakspeare,’ published about fifteen years since.  In short, all his merits and demerits to set forth would take to the end of Mr. Upcott’s book, and then not be told truly.

“He died _____ 18__, much lamented.[A]
Witness his hand,
CHARLES LAMB.

  “18th April, 1827.”