Charles Lamb was an English essayist, critic and poet, best known for Essays of Elia and for Tales from Shakespeare, co-written with his sister Mary Lamb.
Charles Lamb
The Works of Charles Lamb
Ed. Thomas Noon Talfourd. Edward Moxon & Co., 1865.
In the Regent's Park, in particular, Dash had his master completely at his mercy; for the moment they got into the ring, he used to get through the paling on to the greensward, and disappear for a quarter or half an hour together, knowing perfectly well that Lamb did not dare move from the spot where he (Dash) had disappeared till such time as he thought proper to show himself again. And they used to take this particular walk much oftener than they otherwise would, precisely because Dash liked it and Lamb did not.
The poet and author of Essays of Elia lived at Colebrook Cottage near Islington Green from 1823 to 1827. In an article (apparently written under a pseudonym) in Court Magazine, reprinted here, Peter Patmore (father of the poet Coventry Patmore) wrote:
His mornings were chiefly occupied in long walks, sometimes extending to ten or twelve miles, in which at this time he was accompanied by a noble dog, the property of Mr. Hood, to whose humours Lamb became almost a slave, and who at last acquired so portentous an ascendancy, that Lamb requested his friend Mr. Patmore to take him under his care.
The editor adds that 'under his second master we learn from the same source that Dash "subsided into the best bred and best behaved of his species."'
I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than having been once detected – by a familiar damsel – reclined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill (her Cythera), reading – Pamela. There was nothing in the book to make a man seriously ashamed at the exposure; but as she seated herself down by me, and seemed determined to read in company, I could have wished it had been any other book. We read on very sociably for a few pages; and, not finding the author much to her taste, she got up, and – went away. Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, whether the blush (for there was one between us) was the property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. From me you shall never get the secret...
Lamb's walks also took him to Primrose Hill. In Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading from The Last Essays of Elia (1833) he wrote: