," and "The Morning
Post" (thanks to Coleridge's introduction). His latest contribution to
the first-named journal helped to bring about its sudden demise. One
of the latest which was pointed at Sir James Mackintosh (author of
"Vindicae Gallicae") may serve as a specimen of the personal epigram in
which Lamb considered himself happiest:

Though thou'rt like Judas an apostate black,
In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack,
When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf,
He went away and wisely hanged himself;
This thou may'st do at last; yet much I doubt,
If thou hast any bowels to gush out.

Lamb's position after ten years at the India House had no doubt
considerably improved, but he was glad of the opportunity of making an
additional couple of guineas a week as epigrammatist to "The Morning
Post." He did not, however, continue long at the work; it was too
severe a tax to be ever wondering how this, that, or the other person
or event could be hit off in a few lines of copy, and the irksomeness
he felt, combined with the editorial exactions, caused him to give it
up. In 1802 came a memorable visit by the Lambs to Coleridge at
Keswick, a visit which resulted in Charles Lamb's thinking kindlier of
mountains than he had hitherto done, without in any way lessening his
strong local attachment to the metropolis. Of the day in which he
climbed Skiddaw he said: "It was a day that will stand out, like a
mountain, I am sure, in my life"; a happy simile which would not have
occurred to one who stood, so to speak, on a familiar footing with
mountains.

The life in the Temple was roughly divided into two portions: the
first, at Mitre Court Buildings, extended from the spring of 1801 to
that of 1809; then there seems to have been a brief stay of a few
weeks at 34, Southampton Buildings, Holborn, and at the end of the
following May or beginning of June, the Lambs moved into 4, Inner
Temple Lane, which "looks out upon a gloomy churchyard-like court,
called Hare Court, with thin trees and a pump in it.... I was born
near it, and used to drink at that pump when I was a Rechabite of six
years old." Here Lamb and his sister lived until 1817, continuing in
their pleasant weekly evenings to afford a memorable centre for the
meeting of memorable men. At one of these meetings when it was being
debated, whom it was the different members of the company would like
best to meet from among the notable men of letters of th