Note 27 — Chapter II · INTRODUCTION TO BOOK III (Continued):—GROWTH, PROGRESS, AND INTERNAL ECONOMY, OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM, DURING THE PRINCIPAL-LIBRARIANSHIP OF SIR HENRY ELLIS.
Reading edition
It was in the old rooms in the Court-yard of Montagu House that Charles Lamb enjoyed the last, I think, of his ‘dinings-out.’ A few days after his final visit (November, 1834) the hand of Death was already upon him. Cary, before writing the well-known epitaph, wrote some other graceful and touching lines on his old friend. They were occasioned by finding, in a volume lent to Lamb by Cary, Lamb’s bookmark, against a page which told of the death of Sydney. They begin thus:—
‘So should it be, my gentle friend,
Thy leaf last closed at Sydney’s end;
Thou too, like Sydney, wouldst have given
The water, thirsting, and near Heaven.’