Some things never change.

It's easy to be the fool.

It's easy to be fooled. It's easy to have your life upended by events beyond your control.

And it's easy to draw conclusions from incremental bits of information. Especially in this day and age.

While Charles Lamb is known for being a brilliant essayist and romantic writer, his life was marked by bouts of madness and devotion to his beloved sister, Mary.  In July 1819, at age 44, Lamb, who, because of family commitments, had never married, fell in love with an actress, Fanny Kelly, of Covent Garden, and besides writing her a sonnet, he also proposed marriage. She refused him, and he died a bachelor.

Here's a short description of his life from the author's description of Tales from Shakespeare on Amazon.com.

"Charles and Mary Lamb were brother and sister, both gifted writers plagued with madness at certain times in their lives. Charles Lamb is best known for the brilliant personal essays he wrote under the name Elia, first published in London magazine from 1820 to 1823. He was highly acclaimed as a critic and was a close friend to some of the greatest authors of his time, particularly Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Leigh Hunt.

"For a time in 1795–96, he suffered a nervous breakdown. Then, in 1796, Mary, in a fit of derangement, fatally stabbed their mother. Charles undertook the charge of his sister, who suffered periodic breakdowns, and she gratefully repaid him with deep affection and caring. Together they produced Tales from Shakespeare (1807) and Mrs. Leicester’s School (1809), a largely autobiographical collection of stories mostly written by Mary. In The Adventures of Ulysses (1808), Charles also adapted The Odyssey into a form more accessible to the layman. Charles died in 1834 and Mary in 1847."

For more about this brilliant writer, visit https://www.excellence-in-literature.com/charles-lamb-biography/