查爾斯·蘭姆/Charles Lamb
查爾斯·蘭姆（1775—1834），英國最傑出的小品文作家、散文家。蘭姆十分讚賞浪漫主義思潮中人性主義的主張，並以此創作了充滿溫情和調侃的個性化散文。同時，蘭姆也熱愛城市生活，善於用敏銳獨特的眼光捕捉市井生活中變幻的都市風情。其後期創作的《伊裏亞隨筆》，情趣豐富，表述精妙，堪稱蘭姆散文創作的最高成就。《古瓷器》是其中的名篇之一。本文節選自《古瓷器》的前半部分。
I have an almost feminine partiality for old china.When I go to see any great house,I inquire for the china closet,and next for the pictur e gallery.I cannot defend the order of preference,but by saying that w e have all some taste or other,of too ancient a date to admit of our re membering distinctly that it was an acquired one.I can call to mind the first play,and the first exhibition,that I was taken to;but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and saucers were introduced into my imagination.
I had no repugnance then--why should I now have?--to those little,l awless,azure-tinctured grotesques,that under the notion of men and wom en float about,uncircumscribed by any element,in that world before per spective--a china teacup.
I like to see my old friends--whom distance cannot diminish--figurin g up in the air (so they appear to our optics ),yet on terra firma stil l--for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue,which the decorous artist,to prevent absurdity,had made to spring up beneath their sandals.
I love the men with women's faces,and the women,if possible,with still more womanish expressions.
Here is a young and courtly mandarin,handing tea to a lady from a s alver--two miles off.See how distance seems to set off respect!And her e the same lady,or another--for likeness is identity on teacups--is ste pping into a little fairy boat,moored on the hither side of this calm g arden river,with a dainty mincing foot,which in a right angle of incid ence(as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead--furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream!