With his schoolfellows Charles seems to have been, despite his timid and
retiring disposition (he said of himself, "while the others were all
fire and play, he stole along with all the self-concentration of a young
monk"), a decided favorite. "Lamb," wrote C. V. Le Grice, a schoolmate
often mentioned in essay and letter, "was an amiable, gentle boy, very
sensible and keenly observing, indulged by his schoolfellows and by his
master on account of his infirmity of speech.... I never heard his name
mentioned without the addition of Charles, although, as there was no
other boy of the name of Lamb, the addition was unnecessary; but there
was an implied kindness in it, and it was a proof that his gentle
manners excited that kindness."
For us the most important fact of the Christ's Hospital school-days is
the commencement of Lamb's life-long friendship with Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, two years his senior, and the object of his fervent
hero-worship. Most of us, perhaps, can find the true source of whatever
of notable good or evil we have effected in life in the moulding
influence of one of these early friendships or admirations. It is the
boy's hero, the one he loves and reverences among his schoolfellows,--
not his taskmaster,--that is his true teacher, the setter of the
broader standards by which he is to abide through life. Happy the man
the feet of whose early idols have not been of clay.
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