people, it was accepting it in a sense far too literal. When the presidential election took place, Lamartine had not quite eight thousand votes. Slowly and sadly retiring from public affairs, Lamartine, after December, 1851, withdrew from them altogether. From that date his life must have been more melancholy than our words or even his own can picture—melancholy from his private misfortunes—melancholy from his knowledge that in France he has helped the triumph of those political principles which he most abhors. To Lamartine's many troubles have during long years been added pecuniary embarrassments. These were increased by the February revolution. Ungrateful and ungenerous toward Lamartine who saved her from anarchy, France does nothing to relieve the distress caused by the wreck of his fortune; the patriot and the poet Lamartine at seventy is compelled to toil as hard as the lowest literary hack. How can we expect fiery inspiration, finished art, in such circumstances? The gifted and accomplished author of the "Meditations" and the "Harmonies" has been producing tales, histories, essays by the dozen. We have a "History of Turkey" in eight volumes; a "History of the Restoration" in seven volumes; a "History of the Constituent Assembly" in four volumes; histories of Russia, of the Revolution of 1848; biographies innumerable. From 1849 to 1852 Lamartine edited the Counsellor of the People; from 1852 to 1856 the Civiliser; from 1856 to the present time the Familiar Course of Literature. In these periodicals he has treated every imaginable subject, often hastily and superficially, but always with his flowing eloquence and improvisatorial facility and grace. Lamartine is at present publishing by subscription a new and complete edition of his works, containing much new matter, such as a life of Byron and a life of Tasso. However successful this vast enterprise may be, it cannot effectually or finally free Lamartine from his crushing, exhausting anxieties. It is painful, no doubt, to behold a man of a noble nature, who has done his country and mankind signal and lasting service, doomed to the penury and the drudgery which are the sisters of despair. But the stern justice of coming centuries will ask whether Lamartine ever exercised becoming and indispensable self-denial; and whether any amount of adversity would make commendable on the part of genius the degradation of literature into the mere means of vanquishing debt. It may be questioned also whether Lamartine has not made a somewhat too lavish use of the argument addressed to pity; and whether, instead of a heroic silence, he has not spoken to us too frequently of his tears. However, it is not for us to pronounce the Rhadamanthine verdict; it is enough if we have been accurate and conscientious chroniclers.—W. M—l.
LAMB, Lady Caroline, authoress and social notability, born in November, 1785, was the only daughter of the third earl of Besborough. Before she was twenty she was married to the Hon. William Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne, the well-known statesman. Clever, accomplished, and eccentric, she formed an intimacy with Lord Byron, the termination of which affected her painfully. She has pourtrayed him in her novel of "Glenarvon," which was followed by two other fictions, "Graham Hamilton," and "Ada Reis." After many years of seclusion at Brocket Hall, she died on the 25th January, 1828. She had numbered among her admirers Madame De Stael and the duke of Wellington.—F. E.
LAMB, Charles, the first of English humourists, was born on 10th February, 1775, and was the younger son of Mr. John Lamb, a native of Lincoln, who became clerk to Mr. Salt, one of the benchers of the Inner temple, where Charles was born and spent the first seven years of his life. In 1782 he was presented to the school of Christ's hospital, and remained a scholar of that celebrated establishment till he had entered on his fifteenth year. The sweetness of his disposition made him a great favourite among his school-fellows, some of whom afterwards became famous in the world, and retained to the last their affection for their amiable, gentle, and delicate school friend. Lamb's classical attainments would have insured him an exhibition and a university education, but for an unfortunate impediment in his speech which unfitted him for the clerical profession, and condemned him to the uncongenial labour of the "desk's dull wood." In 1792 he obtained an appointment in the accountant's office of the East India Company, where he spent the succeeding thirty-three years of his life. Lamb's parents were very poor, and his small salary was devoted to their support, but the weight of their maintenance fell upon his sister, the well-known Mary Lamb. At length the incessant watching by night which the increasing infirmities of her mother rendered necessary, combined with the laborious attention to needlework by day, made great inroads on Mary's health and deranged her mind. On the 22nd of September, 1796, she suddenly broke out into a frenzy, seized a knife which lay upon the table, and rushing at a little girl, her apprentice, pursued her round the room. Her infirm old mother attempted to interfere, and Mary, with loud shrieks, turned upon her and stabbed her to the heart. An inquest was held the next day, at which the jury brought in a verdict of lunacy. This terrible incident exercised a most powerful influence on Lamb's whole subsequent career. Death soon after released his aged father from his state of imbecility and suffering; and Charles, with an unselfish and heroic devotedness as noble as it is rare, resolved at once to make his sister's welfare the object of his life. He was at this time in love, but for her sake he renounced all thoughts of marriage; and with an income of scarcely more than £100 a year, at twenty-one years of age, he cheerfully set out on the journey of life with his sister, who was only endeared to him the more by her strange calamity. The terrible ordeal through which Lamb had passed at this time affected his own reason, but the attack was of short duration and never returned, though this tendency which, like his sister's, was evidently hereditary, accounts for the waywardness and whimsical recklessness which he occasionally displayed in company. Lamb had from his school-days enjoyed the friendship of Coleridge and Lloyd; and stimulated probably by their example and influence, had cheered his ungenial toils by the cultivation of poetry. His first publication consisted of a few sonnets and other poems contributed to a volume of poetry by the two friends mentioned above, and which appeared in 1797, but excited little attention. In the following year he published his prose tale of "Rosamond Gray," which sold better than his poems. His tragedy of "John Woodvil" was completed in 1799, but it was never acted, and was not published till 1801, when it met with an unfavourable reception from the Edinburgh reviewers. In 1810 he became a contributor to a quarterly magazine entitled the Reflector, edited by Leigh Hunt; and some of Lamb's best effusions appeared in that short-lived periodical. On the establishment of the London Magazine in 1820, he began his "Essays of Elia"—the name under the cover of which he acquired his most brilliant reputation. In the beginning of 1823 the "Essays of Elia" were collected and published in a separate form, and met with a rapid sale. In 1825 he was permitted to retire from the drudgery of his clerkship with a liberal pension. His feelings on being emancipated from the desk, to which he had grown as it were until the wood had entered his soul, are beautifully depicted in his essay on "The Superannuated Man." But after the first enjoyment of freedom and uninterrupted leisure was over, he languished for want of steady employment, and discovered when too late that his happiness had not been promoted by the change. He occupied himself with occasional contributions to the New Monthly, the Athenæum and other periodicals, and with assisting Hone in the preparation of his Every-day Book and Table-talk. A small volume of poems entitled "Album Verses" appeared in 1830, and the "Last Essays of Elia" in 1833. He died somewhat suddenly of erysipelas, 27th December, 1834, in the sixtieth year of his age. Mary Lamb, his sister, survived till 1847. In conjunction with her brother she wrote "Mrs. Leicester's School," "Tales from Shakspeare," and "Poetry for Children." The field which Lamb occupies is limited, but he reigns there supreme. He reflects every mood and touches every chord with a master hand. His works, like his conversation, exhibit by turns wit, humour, fun, quaintness, pathos, and varied fancy; and mingled with all is constantly seen the kindly, loving, honest, enjoying nature of the writer. It may be safely predicted that his incomparable "Essays of Elia" will last as long as the English language. His letters to his distinguished friends Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, Bernard Barton, Manning, Procter, and other eminent writers, are among the happiest and the most delightful specimens of epistolary composition which the language affords. See Letters of Charles Lamb and Final Memorials by Judge Talfourd.—J. T.
LAMB, George, fourth son of the first Lord Melbourne, was born in 1784, and in 1832 became under-secretary of state for the home department. An early contributor to the Edinburgh Review, he did not escape Lord Byron's notice, who,
