Charles Lamb and St. Thomas Aquinas

Extract

A strange juxtaposition! Yet a perfectly warranted one.

On 25th March, 1829, Charles Lamb wrote to his friend, Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, telling him of some books he had purchased and then he went on to say :

And also one of whom I have oft heard and had dreams, but never saw in the flesh—that is, in sheepskin—the whole Theologic Works of Thomas Aquinas ! My arms ache with lugging it a mile to the stage; but the burden was a pleasure . . . . O, the glorious old Schoolman ! There must be something in him. Such great names imply greatness .... How I will revel in his cobwebs and subtleties, till my brain spins.

Seven months afterwards—on the 26th of October—he hears of the illness of Coleridge and he seems to have thought that the reading of St. Thomas would do him good, for he wrote to Mr. Gilman on that day :

How grieved I was to hear in what indifferent health Coleridge has been and I not to know of it! A little School Divinity well applied may be healing. I send him Honest Tom of Aquin, fhat was always an obscure great idea to me. I never thought or dreamt to see him in the flesh, but t’other day I rescued him from a stall in Barbican and brought him off in triumph. He comes to greet Coleridge’s acceptance, for his shoe-latchets I am unworthy to unloose.