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expression x > f jjac ^^ his p&tnful voi £ ay !^ vli / ich >> i # spite of all the beauties and treasures ^ it wa ^ . t-haifmeaii 3 % off ) bringifigtQ < y 0 u had yet suohian expression , in tits Wiie eifi l <^ ag suflfering sund patient endurance , as at first to prevent-. the sensation excited by his extraordinary power of conversation being on © * of perfect enjoyment . I had heard much of this power , but no description , however
vivid , could give an idea ' of the uninterrupted outpouring of poetry in the spoken prose that streamed from his lips . It was a realization of the fairy tale of the enchanted child ; he never opened his mouth but out came a precious gem , a pearl beyond all price , which all around gathered up to hoard in the cabinet of their memories . His figure was tall and somewhat inclined to corpulency ; its expression was , like that of his voice , one of suffering
borne long and patiently . There was a certain air of dissatisfaction—no * unsatisfiedness , —( how different are the two !) which set tke mind busily to work to discover why , with all the choice gifts-jwith-which genius had blessed him , he should not be entirely happy ; . The mystery has been since unriddled ; he had uever knows the reality of love ; he had dreamt of it in his poems , but while seeking to make his dependence upon it in his own existence * it had failed him . He was a slave to the laws which doom
a creature , who has mated mistakenly , either to live forever in joyless companionship , or to live a solitary in the depths of his heart ' affections , without hope of possessing that > one sympathy which is essential to the clevelopement of man ' s noblest , best , and most happiness-giving attributes . There was the secret of the painful voice and of the suffering form ; and there , tod , * was the secpet of his recourse to the dram of opium , thathypocriticaltJiing which ipreterids to relieve the suffering which it eventually aggra-¦
vates ^ - . ,- : . . .. . .. The icharacter of Charles Lamb ' s person was in total contrast to that of Coleridge . His strongly-marked , deeply- > lined face , furrowed more by feeling than age , like an engraving by Blake , where every : line told its separate story , or like a finely chiselled head done by some-master in marble , where every touch of the chisel marked some new attribute . Yet withal there was so much
sweetness and playfulness lurking about the corners of the mouth , that-it gave to the face the extraordinary character of flexible granite , ' His figure was small even to spareness . It was as if the soul within , in its constant restless activity , had worn the body to its smallest possibility of existence . There was an equal amount of difference in his conversation from that of Coleridge , as
there was in his person . It was not one uninterrupted flow , but a * eii 0 dical production of sentences , short , telling , full of wit , philosophy > at times slightly caustic , though that is too strong a word Stir satire which was' of the jnoSt good-natured kind . There was another essential point of difference . In Coleridge might be detected a certain consciousness of being listened to , and at times
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164 An Evening with Charles Lamb and Coleridge .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1835, page 164, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2643/page/20/
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