[英國]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 picture gallery. I cannot defend the order of preference, but by saying, that we have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering 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, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that under the notion of men and women, float about, uncircumscribed by any element, in that world before perspective-a china tea cup.
I like to see my old friends-whom distance cannot diminish-figuring up in the air（so they appear to our optics），yet on terra firma still-for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, has 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 salver-two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect!And here the same lady, or another-for likeness is identity on teacups-is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence（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!