was his manner toward Procter,
whom he one time noticed to be in low spirits and imagined the cause
to be lack of money. "My dear boy," said he suddenly turning toward
his friend, "I have a quantity of useless things, I have now in my
desk a--a hundred pounds--that I don't _know_ what to do with. Take
it."

Some years ago when comparing these two men a Mr. Roose wrote in
concluding his paper: "We are all familiar with Johnson's huge,
ungainly form, arrayed in brown suit more or less dilapidated,
singed, bushy wig, black stockings, and mean old shoes. A quaint
little figure, Lamb comes before our vision, in costume uncontemporary
and as queer as himself, consisting of a suit of black cloth (they
both affected dark colors), rusty silk stockings shown from the knees,
thick shoes a mile too large, shirt with a wide, ill-plaited frill,
and tiny white neckcloth tied in a minute bow."

It is pleasant to fancy these two originals being brought into
personal contact. Nor is it hard, for all the tokens to the contrary,
to imagine Elia taking the grand, humane old doctor into his embrace
(a huger armful than his beloved folios), sitting up with him o'
nights, as he did with them, delighting in the humor of his
conversation, which was said by a contemporary to be unequaled except
by the old comedians, in whom Lamb's spirit found diversion; piercing
to heights and depths in his nature which Boswell never revealed to
him; while Johnson, it may safely be inferred, would have loved this
"poor Charles," in whom Carlyle could perceive but so slender a strain
of worth. But had they met at all, it would have been on equal terms.
Goldsmith maintained with difficulty, though he did maintain, his
attitude of independence towards the colossus of his age. Charles
Lamb, without any difficulty and without the show of assertiveness,
would have maintained it better. Lamb, who from earliest manhood
refused to knock under to the threatening intellectual arrogance of
Coleridge; who shook Wordsworth by the nose instead of by the hand
with the greeting, "How d'ye do, old Lake Poet!"--his stammering voice
might have broken with impunity on the doctor's weightiest utterances
with the absurdest quips and twists of speech of which even he was
capable. Yet both were of wayward nature, and had they met might not
have coalesced.

Lamb would have understood Johnson better than Johnson would have
understood the whimsicalities of the witty clerk. At one time