"
In the next poem he is called "wild-eyed boy." The two epithets,
"wild-eyed" and "gentle-hearted," will recall Charles Lamb to the minds
of all who knew him personally. Mr. Talfourd seems to think that the
special delight in the country, ascribed to him by my father, was a
distinction scarcely merited. I rather imagine that his indifference to
it was a sort of "mock apparel" in which it was his humour at times to
invest himself. I have been told that, when visiting the Lakes, he took
as much delight in the natural beauties of the region as might be
expected from a man of his taste and sensibility. [b]
[[Sub-footnote b:
"Thou wert a scorner of the field, my Friend,
But more in show than truth."
From Mr. W.'s poem "To a good man of most dear memory", quoted in p.
323.]]
Mr. Coleridge's expression, recorded in the "Table Talk", that he
"looked on the degraded men and things around him like moonshine on a
dunghill, that shines and takes no pollution," partly alludes to that
tolerance of moral evil, both in men and books, which was so much
remarked in Charles Lamb, and was, in so good a man, really remarkable.
His toleration of it in books is conspicuous in the view he takes of the
writings of Congreve and Wycherley, in his essay on the artificial
comedy of the last century ("Works", vol. ii, p. 322), and in many of
his other literary criticisms.
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