Charles Lamb to the rescue

 If I had my way, Charles Lamb would be recognized as one of the great English writers, and many people would be marking his 249th birthday.

Lamb’s Essays of Elia are wonderful. So are his letters.

Lamb’s life was marked by tragedy, but he was lucky in his friends. They included Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, John Keats, William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt. They also included George Dyer, an absent-minded, self-effacing fellow who was one of the great classics scholars of the day.

In later life, when Lamb and his sister, Mary, lived in Islington, Dyer left their house and, lost in thought, walked into the river. 

Lamb, who was 5 feet tall in his shoes and slender, rescued him, somehow getting to the right point on the riverbank to grab the sinking scholar.

Before either the rescuer or the rescued could recover, a one-eyed man who claimed to be a doctor and who made a practice of reviving people who’d fallen into the river appeared. This fellow always prescribed cognac — for the victim, for the traumatized loved ones and especially for the doctor.

It’s a Lamb story with all the trimmings: a tragedy or tragedy barely avoided, caused by human stupidity or thoughtlessness, with salvation achieved by sheer luck, and the moment of triumph interrupted by absurd characters who wander in as if sent by heaven.

• Sources and notes: Charles Lamb was born Feb. 10, 1775, in Inner Temple, London. Lamb’s version of the story is in the essay “Amicus Redivivus” in Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia; London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1978, pp. 245-9.

Eric G. Wilson, Dream-Child: A Life of Charles Lamb; Yale University Press, 2022, p. 342-4.

Several posts mention Wilson’s book. The first was “A new biography of Charles Lamb,” Aug. 20, 2022.