small clerkship in the House of Commons, and Henry Crabb Robinson records in his diary under date of February 27, 1825, that he met Burney on that day at the Lambs', and adds: "He has brought his parliamentary index to a close and has now to look out for a new occupation, for the law seems to offer no favorable prospects for him." He seems to have cherished literary ambitions and at one time wrote a farce which he submitted to Mary Lamb for approval, and she good-naturedly persuaded him that no one could write a farce under thirty years of age. Martin Burney's father, Rear Admiral Burney-also of the Lamb circle-died in November, 1821, leaving his son wholly unprovided for. The further embarrassment of a very foolish marriage left Martin "very ill off in every way," as Lamb told Crabb RobinHe managed, however, in some fashion, to weather the adverse storms which he always seemed encountering, till 1852, when he died in London. son. Burney was such an oddity, such "a queer fish," and was attached with such constancy to the Lambs that everyone who has written about Charles and Mary Lamb has also left testimony regarding him. Southey thus describes him in a letter to Coleridge: "The captain hath a son-begotten, according to Lamb, upon a mermaid; and thus far is certain, that he is the queerest fish out of water. A paralytic affection in childhood has kept one side of his face stationary, while the other has continued to grow, and the two sides form the most ridiculous whole you can imagine; the boy, however, is a sharp lad, the inside not having suffered." Bryan Procter ("Barry Cornwall") has given us the following description of Burney: "The man whom I found at Lamb's house more frequently than any other person was Martin Burney. His face was warped by paralysis which affected one eye and one side of his mouth. He was plain and unaffected in manner, very diffident and retiring; yet pronouncing his opinions, when asked to do so, without apology or hesitation. He was a barrister; and traveled the western circuit at the same time as Sir Thomas Wilde (afterwards Lord Truro), whose briefs he used to read before the other considered them; marking out the principal points and facts for attention." Leigh Hunt has also left testimony regarding Burney: "How obstinate Martin Burney is,' observed a visitor. 'He's an excellent fellow,' said Lamb, avoiding the point. 'I like Martin-but he's so obstinate,' reiterated the speaker. 'Well,' replied Lamb, 'I like a good solid obstinacy. Something may come of it. Besides, there is something to quarrel with. One's blows don't tell upon a fellow who goes whisking about like a ball of worsted, and won't stand up for his own opinion. Martin's a freeholder, and insists upon having his vote.' Thomas Westwood in his reminiscences of Charles and Mary Lamb enumerates Martin Burney, among other friends of the Lambs, in the following fashion: "Then there was Martin Burney, ugliest of men, hugest of eaters, honestest of friends. I see him closeted with Mary Lamb, reading the Gospel of St. John for the first time." Proctor tells us that "Martin Burney's eulogies on books were sometimes intermingled with expressions of his satisfaction with the veal pie which employed him at the sideboard.” 999 Likely no one of his acquaintances afforded Lamb so much amusement as Burney. Lamb's well-known remark to Burney at the card table-"If dirt was trumps what a hand you'd hold"-has become almost a classic. People who cannot quote another sentence uttered by Lamb will remember that. It throws much light upon the friendly, bantering intimacy of these two lovable and kindred spirits. In August, 1814, we find Lamb writing Wordsworth in this fashion: "I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receipt of the great armful of poetry which you have sent me; and to get it before the rest of the world, too! I have gone quite through with it, and was thinking to have accomplished that pleasure a second time before I wrote to thank you, but Martin Burney came in the night (while we were out) and made a holy theft of it, but we expect restitution in a day or two. Many of Burney's whimsicalities are worth recording because they are directly concerned with his contact with the legal profession. In a letter which Lamb wrote to Sarah Hazlitt may be found an amusing account of Burney's peculiarities: "Martin is as odd as ever. We had a dispute about the word 'heir' which I contended was pronounced like air;' he said that might be in common parlance; or that we might so use it, speaking of the 'Heir-atLaw,' a comedy; but that in the law courts it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, and to say Hayer; he thought it might even vitiate a cause, if a counsel pronounced it otherwise." This last extravagance is so like Lamb himself that one must suspect him of a pure invention to bring about, good-naturedly, Martin's ridicule. In the same letter, Lamb adds: "He (Burney) came down here and insisted on reading Virgil's 'Eneid' all through with me (which he did), because a counsel must know latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. John, because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a court of justice. A third time he would carve a fowl, which he did very illfavoredly, because 'we did not know how indispensable it was for a barrister to do all those sort of things well. Those little things were of more consequence than we supposed.'"' Certainly the whimsical Martin Burney was a fit crony and companion for the equally whimsical Charles Lamb. That Lamb's love for Martin Burney was deep and genuine, such as Lamb probably felt for no other human being except his sister Mary, there can be no doubt. He wrote Procter, "Martin Burney is richly worth your knowing. He is on the top scale of my friendship ladder, on which an angel or two is still climbing, and some, alas! descending." Again his warm affection for the simple, loyal-hearted Burney found expression in the following in the dedication of Lamb's prose works in 1818: "In all my threadings of this worldly maze, No finer tribute from a man of letters to a lawyer can be found anywhere. Early in 1815 Lamb and his biographer, Thomas Noon Talfourd, met for the first time. Lamb's next door neighbor at Inner Temple Lane was Joseph Chitty, the famous special pleader and author of the work on common law pleading that long ago became one of the great land-marks of the legal profession. Talfourd was a law student in Chitty's office when he met Lamb. The meeting was arranged for a dinner given by a mutual friend. Years later Talfourd wrote of the occasion: "My duties at the office did not allow me to avail myself of this invitation to dinner, but I went up at ten o'clock, through a deep snow, palpably congealing into ice, and was amply repaid when I reached the hospitable abode of my friend. There was Lamb preparing to depart, but he stayed an hour in kindness to me, and then accompanied me to our common home- the Temple." Eighteen years later when the young law student had become Sergeant Talfourd, Lamb wrote to congratulate him, and seized the opportunity for a pun to the effect that he had known Talfourd "when he was a law-chit-a Chittyling"-which seems to have been the only instance where anyone ever found a source of levity in the name of Joseph Chitty. Talfourd was in many respects Lamb's Boswell. He seems to have conceived early the plan of writing Lamb's biography, a task which he later carried out with great fidelity. Talfourd's book is in many ways incomplete, and at times its style is grand, but, nevertheless, no other biographer of Lamb equaled it until the comparatively recent publication of the two-volume Life, by E. V. Lucas. Very naturally Talfourd named a son Charles Lamb Talfourd, and this brought a letter from Lamb in which he said, "You could not have told me of a more friendly thing than you have been doing. I am proud of my namesake. I shall take care never to do any dirty action, pick pockets, or anyhow get myself hanged, for fear of reflecting igno miny upon your young Chisom. I have now a motive to be good." Talfourd, possibly more than any other lawyer of the Lamb group, was engaged in active practice. He was no misfit in the profession like Burney, a jurist like Field, or a lawyer turned man-of-letters like Procter. Talfourd earned his bread by the practice of law. The chief concern of his life lay in the trial of causes. His compatriot at the bar, Henry Crabb Robinson, has set down in his diary an interesting estimate: "Talfourd combined great industry with great vivacity of intellect. He had a marvelous flow of florid language both in conversation and speech-making. His father being unable to maintain him in his profession, he had to support himself, which he did most honorably. He went into the chambers of Chitty, the great special pleader, as a pupil; but he submitted, for a consideration, to a drudgery which would be thought hardly compatible with such lively faculties, and at variance with his dramatic and poetic taste. These, too, he made to a certain extent, matters of business. He connected himself with magazines and became the theatrical critic of several of them. He thereby contracted a style of flashy writing, which offended severe judges, who drew in consequence unfavorable conclusions which have not been realized." Talfourd published a pamphlet vehemently praising Wordsworth. Later Lamb introduced him to Wordsworth with the words: "Mr. Wordsworth, I introduce to you Mr. Talfourd, my only admirer." He became a court reporter for the "Times," wrote critical reviews, and with his practice "honorably brought up a numerous family." He wrote a very popular tragedy, "Ion." Two further attempts at the drama did not succeed so well, which Crabb Robinson considers fortunate, "as literary fame is no recommendation either to an attorney or to a Prime Minister who seeks for a laborious Solicitor-General." Talfourd later entered Parliament and gained distinction by introducing a |