New acquaintances came, too; never men of fame or fortune or fashion, but men of mark, you may be sure. And many among them notable only for some tincture of the absurd in their characters: for “I love a _Fool_,” he said, “as naturally as if I were of kith and kin to him.” Crabb Robinson has left us his reminiscence of this place and these people, when speaking of his first acquaintance with the Lambs: “They were then living in a garret in Inner Temple Lane. In that humble apartment I spent many happy hours, and saw a greater number of excellent persons than I had ever seen collected together in one room.” Thus has he summed up, in his sedate way, all that need be said on that score.
The capricious Coleridge had once more become constant, after his refusal for two years to write, and his needless estrangement, which had called forth Lamb’s lines, “I had a friend, a kinder friend had no man;” and of whom, after many years, he yet was able to say: “The more I see of him in the quotidian undress and relaxation of his mind, the more cause I see to love him and believe him a very good man.” There was Hazlitt--trying to paint when Lamb first met him, finding later his true calling as art critic and essayist; easily first of all in that field, before or after him, in insight, breadth, and vigour; arrogant, intense, bitter, brooding forever over the fall of Napoleon: the only male creature he reverenced except Coleridge. He must needs respect, in Coleridge, the one man known to him who alone could surpass him in untiring fluency, even under the influence of strongest tea--sole stimulus allowed himself by Hazlitt at that time. Him, Lamb finds to be, “in his natural state, one of the wisest and finest spirits breathing.” And he, too, had tried to quarrel with the Lambs, and had failed, as did all who made the sorry attempt! There was William Wordsworth, ascetic, self-centred, quite sure of himself; whose true powers, and all that was genuine in his genius, Lamb was one of the first to recognize and to celebrate. There was Godwin, so bold in his speculations, so daring with his pen, so placid in person, and so mild of voice. This terrifying radical used to prattle on trivial topics till after supper, and then invariably fall fast asleep. “A very well-behaved decent man, ... quite a tame creature, I assure you; a middle-sized man, both in stature and understanding,” wrote his keen-eyed host. There was old Captain Burney, afterward admiral, son of the famous organist, brother of the more famous writing-woman, Fanny, Madame d’Arblay. He had been taught by Eugene Aram, he had sailed all around the globe with Captain Cook, and was still young and tender in heart under his rough exterior. There was his son, Martin, of whom Lamb said, “I have not found a whiter soul than thine;” Leigh Hunt, airy, sprightly, full of fine fancies; Charles Lloyd, poetic and intense; Tom Hood, slight of figure, feeble of voice, face of a Methodist parson, silent save for his sudden puns; Thomas Manning, the Cambridge mathematical tutor, “a man of a thousand;” Basil Montagu, the philanthropized courtier; stalwart Allan Cunningham; Haydon, the painter, eager everywhere for controversy; the preacher, Edward Irving, content to listen, there; Bernard Barton, Quaker poet, bank drudge; gentle and genial Barry Cornwall; Talfourd, the sympathetic chronicler of these scenes; constant and trusty Crabb Robinson; De Quincey, self-involved and sometimes spiteful, yet not behind any one of that brilliant band in his love for Lamb, whom he earnestly attests to be “the noblest of human beings.”