Charles Lamb war ein englischer Dichter.
Charles Lamb war 1792–1825 bei der Ostindien-Kompanie als Sekretär angestellt und starb am 27. Dezember 1834 in Edmonton.
Als Schriftsteller trat er zuerst im London Magazine mit Essays auf, in denen er seine heitere Lebensphilosophie vortrug, und welche sich dem Besten anreihen, was die englische Literatur in diesem Fach besitzt.
Seine Gedichte sind meist lyrischen Inhalts, mehr tändelnd als begeistert, aber voll Zartheit und Anmut. Als Typus seiner Poesie kann das von Ferdinand Freiligrath übersetzte Gedicht The old familiar faces gelten.
Allgemeinen Beifall fanden seine Tale of Rosamond Grey und die Tales from Shakespeare 1807, 2 Bde., an welchen auch seine Schwester Mary Ann Anteil hatte.
In seinen Specimens of English dramatic poets who lived about the time of Shakespeare wies er auf die Einfachheit und Reinheit der Diktion der alten Dramatiker hin, die er selbst in seiner Tragödie John Woodvil anstrebte.
Seine Album verses enthalten Gelegenheitsgedichte.
„Leichtgläubigkeit ist eines Mannes Schwäche und eines Kindes Stärke.“
Essays
Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength. - Witches, and Other Night Fears. In: The London Magazine, Oct. 1821, p. 385 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=FsAYAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA385&dq=credulity
zitiert in: Stephen Hawking: Das Universum in der Nussschale. Hoffmann & Campe, 2001, Kapitel 2, S. 39
Nothing puzzles me more than time and space, and yet nothing puzzles me less, for I never think about them. - Letter to Mr. Manning, 2nd January 1802, books.google.de http://books.google.de/books?id=vcMdAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA155
Essays
Nothing is to me more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a new-married couple. - A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People. books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=LNUeAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA146
Essays
Books think for me. - Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading
John Woodvil, 3. Akt / John Woodvil
Original engl.: "These high and gusty relishes of life, sure, // Have no allayings of mortality in them." - John Woodvil. A Tragedy. Act the Third. books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=O8EwAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA534
„Wie Krankheit die Dimension des Ichs vergrößert!“
Essays
How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! - The Convalescent. books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=EvtLAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA188
“Tis the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense, and to have her nonsense respected.”
Quelle: The Life, Letters and Writings of Charles Lamb
“A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature.”
Poor Relations.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)
“Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.”
The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple.
Essays of Elia (1823)
“I love to lose myself in other men's minds.”
Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)
Quoted in "Table Talk" http://books.google.com/books?id=LIxUAAAAcAAJ&q=%22greatest+pleasure+I+know+is+to+do+a+good+action+by+stealth+and+to+have+it+found+out+by+accident%22&pg=PA14#v=onepage in The Athenaeum magazine (4 January 1834).
“The flouting infidel doth mock when Christians cry”
Lamb's letter to Charles Cowden Clarke, in summer, 1821. As quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1905). Letter 263.
“And half had staggered that stout Stagirite.”
Written at Cambridge; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself.”
The Convalescent.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)
“The mixture spoils two good things, as Charles Lamb (Elia) used to say of brandy and water.”
Abraham Hayward, writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1848.
Attributed
Letter to Thomas Manning (December 26, 1815)<!-- published or quoted where? -->
“The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.”
Letter to Thomas Manning (February 15, 1802)
Composed at midnight, as quoted in The Poetical Works of Charles Lamb, p. 72.
