It was there Charles
Lamb passed the novitiate of his long years of clerkship in the East
India Company. In Tom Folio's fancy a slender, boyish figure was still
seated, quill in hand, behind those stately porticoes looking upon
Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate. That famous first paper in the
"Essays," describing the South-Sea House and the group of human oddities
which occupied desks within its gloomy chambers, had left an indelible
impression upon the dreamer. Every line traced by the "lean annuitant"
was as familiar to Tom Folio as if he had written it himself. Stray
scraps, which had escaped the vigilance of able editors, were known
to him, and it was his to unearth amid a heap of mouldy, worm-eaten
magazines, a handful of leaves hitherto forgotten of all men. Trifles,
yes--but Charles Lamb's! "The king's chaff is as good as other people's
corn," says Tom Folio.
Often his talk was sweet and racy with old-fashioned phrases; the talk of
a man who loved books and drew habitual breath in an atmosphere of
fine thought.
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