'To Run as Naturally as a Child's Babble'

“There are not many people about whom it is more difficult—or more unnecessary—to write than it is about Lamb. A few very unfortunate people do not enjoy him, and probably never could be made to do so. Most of those who care for literature at all revel in him: and do not in the least need to be told to do so.”

 

Almost everything I’ve ever written about Charles Lamb amounts to me pointing at one of his essays or letters and saying, “Look at this. Lamb’s a hoot. Why don’t you read it?” Convincing the terminally earnest that something is funny is a waste of time and guaranteed to kill the chance of even a sympathy snort. Lamb requires no exegesis apart from an occasional footnote identifying a name, which means he is not ideal classroom fodder. All a reader needs is a sense of humor, curiosity about human nature and a taste for eccentrically good prose.

 

In 1922, George Saintsbury published A Letter Book, an anthology prefaced by an “Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing.” The passage quoted above precedes Lamb’s letter to Mary Wordsworth, the poet’s wife. Saintsbury rightly says: “[Y]ou never know exactly when Lamb is speaking seriously.” That’s enough warning for some readers to keep the book closed. The same applies to such Lambian literary cousins as Laurence Sterne, Max Beerbohm and P.G. Wodehouse – writers many readers will never get. In the letter to Mrs. Wordsworth, Lamb launches into one of his favorite shticks – complaining about how difficult it is to find time for letter-writing:

 

“I am now trying to do it in the midst of commercial noises, and with a quill which seems more ready to glide into arithmetical figures and names of gourds, cassia, cardamoms, aloes, ginger, or tea, than into kindly responses and friendly recollections.”

 

Saintsbury shrewdly places Lamb among his literary forebears:

 

"The two English writers whom, on very different sides of course, Lamb most resembles, and whom he may be said to have copied (of course as genius copies) most, are Sterne and Sir Thomas Browne. But between the actual letters and the actual works of these two, themselves, there is a great difference, while (as has just been noted) in Lamb's case there is none. The reason of course is that though Sir Thomas is one of our very greatest authors and the Reverend Yorick not by any means unplaced in the running for greatness, both are in the highest degree artificial: while Lamb's way of writing, complex as it is, necessitating as it must have done not a little reading and (as would seem almost necessary) not a little practice, seems to run as naturally as a child's babble.”