There are some men whom to abuse is pleasant.  Coleridge is not one of them.  How gladly we would love the author of ‘Christabel’ if we could!  But the thing is flatly impossible.  His was an unlovely character.  The sentence passed upon him by Mr. Matthew Arnold (parenthetically, in one of the ’Essays in Criticism’)—­“Coleridge had no morals”—­is no less just than pitiless.  As we gather information about him from numerous quarters, we find it impossible to resist the conclusion that he was a man neglectful of restraint, irresponsive to the claims of those who had every claim upon him, willing to receive, slow to give.

In early manhood Coleridge planned a Pantisocracy where all the virtues were to thrive.  Lamb did something far more difficult:  he played cribbage every night with his imbecile father, whose constant stream of querulous talk and fault-finding might well have goaded a far stronger man into practicing and justifying neglect.

That Lamb, with all his admiration for Coleridge, was well aware of dangerous tendencies in his character, is made apparent by many letters, notably by one written in 1796, in which he says:—­

“O my friend, cultivate the filial feelings! and let no man think himself released from the kind charities of relationship:  these shall give him peace at the last; these are the best foundation for every species of benevolence.  I rejoice to hear that you are reconciled with all your relations.”

This surely is as valuable an “aid to reflection” as any supplied by the Highgate seer.

Lamb gave but little thought to the wonderful difference between the “reason” and the “understanding.”  He preferred old plays—­an odd diet, some may think, on which to feed the virtues; but however that may be, the noble fact remains, that he, poor, frail boy! (for he was no more, when trouble first assailed him) stooped down, and without sigh or sign took upon his own shoulders the whole burden of a lifelong sorrow.

Coleridge married.  Lamb, at the bidding of duty, remained single, wedding himself to the sad fortunes of his father and sister.  Shall we pity him?  No; he had his reward—­the surpassing reward that is only within the power of literature to bestow.  It was Lamb, and not Coleridge, who wrote ’Dream-Children:  a Reverie’:—­

“Then I told how for seven long years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W——­ n; and as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness and difficulty and denial meant in maidens—­when, suddenly turning to Alice, the soul of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a reality of representment that I became in doubt which of them stood before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of speech.  ’We are not of Alice nor of thee, nor are we children at all.  The children of Alice call Bartrum father.  We are nothing, less than nothing, and dreams.  We are only what might have been.’”