[英国]查尔斯·兰姆/Charles Lamb
查尔斯·兰姆（1775-1834），英国最杰出的小品文作家、散文家。兰姆十分赞赏浪漫主义思潮中人性主义的主张，并以此创作了充满温情和调侃的个性化散文。同时，兰姆也热爱城市生活，善于用敏锐独特的眼光捕捉市井生活中变幻的都市风情。其后期创作的《伊里亚随笔》，情趣丰富，表述精妙，堪称兰姆散文创作的最高成就。《古瓷器》是其中的名篇之一。本文节选自《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!