Unimpressed

THE essayist Charles Lamb (CH 1782-89), above, is traditionally seen as the most lovable of Old Blues - but in 1831 Thomas Carlyle, right, took a different view:

Charles Lamb I sincerely believe to be in some considerable degree insane. A more pitiful, ricketty, gasping, staggering, stammering Tomfool I do not know. He is witty by denying truisms and abjuring good manners. His speech wriggles hither and thither with an incessant painful fluctuation, not an opinion in it, or a fact, or a phrase that you can thank him for - more like a convulsion fit than a natural systole and diastole. Besides, he is now a confirmed, shameless drunkard; asks vehemently for gin and water in strangers' houses, tipples till he is utterly mad, and is only not thrown out of doors because he is too much despised for taking such trouble with him. Poor Lamb! Poor England, when such a despicable abortion is named genius!

In fairness, Carlyle's is the only unreservedly hostile picture of Lamb that has come down to us.