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
“The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture.”
Popular Fallacies: XIII, That You Must Love Me and Love My Dog.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)
“I have something more to do than to feel.”
Letter to Coleridge (September 27, 1796), after the death of Lamb's mother.
“A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.”
Popular Fallacies: IX, That the Worst Puns Are the Best.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)
“Not if I know myself at all.”
The Old and New Schoolmaster; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!”
Lamb's Suppers; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Lamb in September 27, 1796. In his letter to Coleridge; after the family tragedy. As quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. Letters (1905).
“He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.”
Captain Starkey; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Lamb's letter to Coleridge in Oct. 24th, 1796. As quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1905). Letter 11.
Letter to Hazlitt (November 10, 1805)
“Riches are chiefly good because they give us time.”
cited in A Little Book of Aphorisms (New York: 1947), p. 186.
Letter to Wordsworth (1806); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)..
Last Essays of Elia (1833)
Letter to Bernard Barton (April 6, 1825), on leaving his "33 years' desk" at the East India House.
“This very night I am going to leave off Tobacco!”
Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realized.
Letter to Thomas Manning (December 26, 1815)
They nothing see,
Themselves except, and creatures like themselves,
That liv'd short-sighted, impotent to save.
So on their dissolute spirits, soon or late,
Destruction cometh 'like an armed man,'
Or like a dream of murder in the night,
Withering their mortal faculties, & breaking
The bones of all their pride.
Living Without God In The World (1798)
