Calcutta. ulum.
5. The Grecians were the small group of superior 7. Cicero's essay On Friendship. scholars selected to be sent to a university (usually
.
504 / CHARLES LAMB
Grecian with S. was Th , who has since executed with ability various diplomatic functions at the Northern courts. Th was a tall, dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech, with raven locks.?Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed him (now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentleman in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent critic; and is author (besides the CountrySpectator) of a Treatise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. M. is said to bear his miter high in India, where the regni novitas8 (I dare say) sufficientlyjustifies the bearing. A humility quite as primitive as that of Jewel or Hooker9 might not be exactly fitted to impress the minds of those Anglo-Asiatic diocesans with a reverence for home institutions, and the church which those fathers watered. The manners of M. at school, though firm, were mild and unassuming.? Next to M. (if not senior to him) was Richards, author of the Aboriginal Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems; a pale, studious Gre-
cian.?Then followed poor S , ill-fated M ! of these the Muse is silent.1 Finding some of Edward's race
Unhappy, pass their annals by.2 Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the dayspring of thy fancies,
with hope like a fiery column before thee?the dark pillar not yet turned? Samuel Taylor Coleridge?- Logician, Metaphysician, Rard!?How have I seen the casual passer through the cloisters stand still, entranced with admiration (while he weighed the disproportion between the speech and the garb of the young Mirandola3), to hear thee unfold, in thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of amblichus, or Plotinus4 (for even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar?while the walls of the old Grey Friars5 re-echoed to the accents of the inspired charity-boy!?Many were the 'wit combats' (to dally awhile with the words of old Fuller) between him and C. V. Le G , 'which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English man-of-war; Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. C. V. L., with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds,
by the quickness of his wit and invention.'6
Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quickly forgotten, Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial laugh, with which thou wert wont to make the old cloisters shake, in thy cognition of some poignant jest of theirs; or the anticipation of some more material, and, peradventure, practical one, of thine own. Extinct are those smiles, with that beautiful countenance, with which (for thou wert the Nireus formosus7 of the school), in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou didst disarm the wrath of infuriated town-damsel, who, incensed by provoking pinch, turning tigress-like round, suddenly converted by thy angel look, exchanged the half-formed terrible 'bl ,' for a gentler
greeting?'bless thy handsome face!'
8. Newness of the reign (Latin). 4. Neoplatonist philosophers. 9. Famous divines in the 16th century during the 5. Christ's Hospital was located in buildings that early period of the Anglican Church. had once belonged to the Grey Friars (i.e., Fran
1. Lamb identified these students as Scott, who ciscans). died insane, and Maunde, who was expelled from 6. Lamb adapts to Coleridge and Charles Valen
the school. tine Le Grice the famous description of the wit
2. Altered from Matthew Prior's 'Carmen Secu-combats between Shakespeare (the 'man-of-war') lare' (1700). 'Edward's race': applied to the stu-and Ben Jonson (the 'great galleon') in Thomas
dents of Christ's Hospital, founded by Edward VI. Fuller's Worthies of England (1662).
3. Pico della Mirandola, the brilliant and charm-7. The handsome Nireus; a Greek warrior in ing humanist and philosopher of the Italian Homer's Iliad 2.
Renaissance.
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DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND BEADING / 505
Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the friends of Elia?the
junior Le G and F ; who impelled, the former by a roving temper, the
latter by too quick a sense of neglect?ill capable of enduring the slights poor
Sizars8 are sometimes subject to in our seats of learning?exchanged their
Alma Mater for the camp; perishing, one by climate, and one on the plains of
Salamanca: Le G , sanguine, volatile, sweet-natured; F , dogged, faith
ful, anticipative of insult, warmhearted, with something of the old Roman
height about him. Fine, frank-hearted Fr- , the present master of Hertford, with Marma
duke T ,9 mildest of missionaries?and both my good friends still?close
the catalogue of Grecians in my time.
1820 1823
Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading1
To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self with the forced product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breeding may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own. ?Lord Foppington in The Relapse2
An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much struck with this bright
