dimness about twelve." These nodes ambrosiance emnceque deum have been well described by Hazlitt, Barry Cornwall, and Talfourd, and it is not our purpose to refer to them at length; but it may be interest ing to enumerate the lawyers who attended them constantly, and to indicate their posi tion on the scale of Charles Lamb's friend ship. First comes Thomas Noon Talfourd, af terwards Mr. Justice Talfourd of the court of common pleas. It was when Talfourd was a youth of nineteen, reading in cham bers with Chitty, the special pleader, that he first met Charles Lamb. Talfourd, being a young man of literary tastes, had been intro duced to Lamb's works by his friend Barron Field, and forthwith conceived a desire to know the author. Now it happened that Chitty's chambers were in Temple lane just next door to those occupied by Lamb and his sister, so that in the natural order of things it was not long before Talfourd met the essayist, and received an invitation to his Wednesday evening receptions. Talfourd was a true hero-worshipper and records his introduction into Charles Lamb's circle with pardonable pride and satisfaction. That was in 1815, and from that time until Lamb's death he was one of his closest friends. Lamb introduced him to Words worth as " my one admirer." Talfourd, in deed, was no mean litterateur himself. He wrote several tragedies of merit, one of which, " Ion," scored a great success with Macready in the leading role. Talfourd was for a time leader of the Oxford circuit, and was raised to the bench in 1849. Lamb seems to have had a genuine regard for him. Many letters from Lamb to Talfourd exist, one of which, congratulating him upon be ing made a serjeant-at-law, is worth quot ing: " My dear T.,— Now cannot I call him serjeant; what is there in a coif? Those canvas sleeves — protective from ink when he was a law chit a Chitty-ling — do more specially plead to the jury court of cold
memory. . . Methought I spied a brother! That familiarity is extinct forever. Curse me if I call him Mr. Serjeant, except, mark me, in eompany. . . Well, of all my old friends, I have lived to see two knighted, one a judge, another in a fair way to it. Why am I restive? Why stands my sun in Gibeon? " Talfourd was one of Lamb's ex ecutors. In 1837 he published the first part of his memoir of Charles Lamb, the second part appearing in 1848. These were subse quently incorporated into one work, which may be considered the standard life of Lamb. It is, of course, written with sympa thy and insight, and contains a charming picture of the home life of Lamb and his sister, but Talfourd, strangely enough, thought fit to mutilate many of Lamb's let ters, often for no apparent or conceivable reason. Another legal member of Charles Lamb's circle was Barron Field, sometime chief justice of Gibraltar. Field was a Christ's Hospital boy, and had a brother in the South Sea house, so that he easily obtained an introduction to Charles Lamb. When he used to visit the Lambs in Inner Temple lane, Field was a struggling young bar stu dent, who managed to support himself by literature. In course of time he became advocate-fiscal of Ceylon, from which place he went to New South Wales, where he was a judge of the supreme court. Then he returned to England for a few years, until he was appointed chief justice of Gibraltar. It was at Gibraltar that Benjamin Disraeli called on him, and afterwards referred to him contemptuously as a man " ever illus trating the obvious, explaining the evident, and expatiating on the commonplace." This is a harsh judgment, and is hardly borne out by facts. At all events, Field was one of Lamb's favorites. He is the "B. F." who accompanied him to Mackery End, in Hertfordshire, an expedition de scribed in the essay of that name; and also of the " Essay on Distant Correspondents,"
