scious expression. Lamb's own friends looked up to him as an intellectual master. They loved the quips of his wit and the cranks of his humor not more than they admired the range and force of his thought and trusted the rightness of his judgments. Perhaps we are slow to appreciate this aspect of Lamb's greatness because his whole personality takes us so by storm that we forget to analyze it into its parts; perhaps Lamb himself has taught us to expect from him only the playful and fanciful. Hazlitt imputed Lamb's puns to humility, as if he had more profound things to say than he liked to venture in earnest, and so preferred the friendly cover of nonsense. In this case all his fun would be but the offspring of intellectual strength and activity, a point of view it is only just to consider. It was inevitable that the real character of Charles Lamb should be often a matter of discussion. When a man devoutly voices the wish that the last breath he draws may be "through a pipe and exhaled in a pun," a hundred serious people will arise to call him trifler. Or when he stands always ready-cocked with a joke that can sting as well as tickle, those who wince under his wit may rightfully resent his favorite form of conversational humor. When Coleridge, referring to his days in the Lamb's Unitarian ministry, asked, "Charles, did you Personalever hear me preach ?" and Lamb replied, "I ty never heard you do anything else," he might feel a bit uncomfortable at the retort that came so near hitting the truth. Often, too, it seemed as if a spirit of perverseness impelled Lamb to show himself, especially among strangers, at his worst. Among those whom he impressed unfavorably was Carlyle, who, as of course he would, thought his conversation "contemptibly small" and a "ghastly make-believe of wit." Like many a sensitive nature Lamb was at his best with those he loved best. To them the "quivering sweetness" of his face, the lines that stood for suffering, sympathy, and deep thought, the soft twinkle of his eyes, and the inexpressible sadness of his smile spoke of a nature which they knew as full of oddities and contradictions, but at the same time fine, sincere, gentle, and

strong of purpose. In the preface to the Last Essays of Elia we read lines which are doubtless Lamb's analysis of his own personality. There he says: "My late friend was in many respects a singular character. Those who did not like him, hated him and some, who once liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth is he gave himself too little concern what he uttered, and in whose presence. He observed neither time nor place, and would e'en out with what came uppermost. .. Few understood

him, and I am not certain that at all times he quite understood himself." But those of us who know Lamb through his writings know him only to love him; for those works are "of all modern literature," as Talfourd says, "most immediately directed to give us heart's-ease and make us happy." And to many of us his reconcilement to life is a more convincing argument for good than the polemics of a strenuous reformer.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lucas, E. V., Life of Charles Lamb.

(Editor), Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. 7 vols. Talfourd, T. N., Life and Letters of Charles Lamb.

Final Memorials of Charles Lamb.

Literary Sketches and Letters.

Ainger, A., Charles Lamb (English Men of Letters). (Editor), Letters of Charles Lamb.

(Editor), Essays of Elia.

Fitzgerald, P., Charles Lamb; his Friends, his Haunts, and his

Books.

Hazlitt, W., The Lambs; their Lives, their Friends, and their Correspondence.

Mary and Charles Lamb; Poems, Letters, and Remains.

De Quincey, T., Biographical Essays.

Dobell, B., Sidelights on Charles Lamb.

Clarke, Mr. and Mrs. Cowden, Recollections of Writers (a few pages devoted to Lamb).

Stoddard, R. H. (Editor), Personal Recollections of Lamb and Others.

Barry Cornwall, Charles Lamb, a Memoir.

Mrs. Gilchrist, Mary Lamb (Famous Women Series).

Martin, E. B., In the Footprints of Charles Lamb (a sort of topographical biography, fully illustrated).

The best short account of Lamb's life and works is that written by Mr. William Macdonald as an Introduction to Dent's edition of the complete works of Lamb.

The following contain frequent interesting allusions to Lamb: Fields, J. T., Yesterdays with Authors (chapter on Barry Cornwall).

Hazlitt, W., Table Talk.

Spirit of the Age.

Pater, W., Appreciations.

Gilfillan, G., Literary Portraits.

Hutton, L., Literary Landmarks of London.

Hunt, Leigh, Autobiography.

Patmore, P. S., My Friends and Acquaintances.

Southey, C. C., Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey.

Wilson, J., Noctes Ambrosianae.

Cottle, J., Early Recollections of Coleridge.

THE ESSAYS OF ELIA

THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE1

READER, in thy passage from the Bank 2-where thou hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself) — to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, or Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban retreat northerly, didst thou never observe a melancholy looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice, to the left -where Threadneedle Street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals ever gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with cloisters, and pillars, with few or no traces of goers-in or comers-out-a desolation something like Balclutha's.*

This was once a house of trade, a centre of busy interests. The throng of merchants was here — the quick pulse of gain and here some forms of business are still kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here are still to be seen stately porticos; imposing staircases; offices roomy as the state apartments in palaces deserted, or thinly peopled with a few straggling clerks; the still more sacred interiors of court and committee rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, door-keepers-directors seated in form on solemn days (to proclaim a dead dividend) at long worm* "I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate." OSSIAN.