I read them, the better I like then, the higher I value them. Indeed, I
live upon the essays of Elia, as Hazlitt did upon "Tristram Shandy," as
a sort of food that simulates with my natural disposition.

And yet, despite all my love and admiration of Charles Lamb,--nay,
rather in consequence of it,--I must blame him of what Mr. Barron Field
was please to eulogize him for,--writing so little. Undoubtedly in most
authors suppression in writing would be a virtue. In Lamb it was a
fault. There are a score or two of subjects which he, "no less from
temerity than felicity of his pen," should have written upon,--subjects
on which he had thought and ruminated for years, and which he, and none
but he, could do justice to. He who loved and admired before or since,
such sterling old writers as Burton, Browne, Fuller, and Walton, should
have given us an article on each of those worthies and their inditing.
Chaucer and Spenser, though proud and happy in having had such an
appreciating reader of there writings as Elia was, when denizen of this
earth, would, methinks, have given him a warmer, heartier, gladder
welcome to heaven, if he had done for them what he did for Hogarth and
the old dramatists,--pointed out to the would "with a finger of fire"
the truth and beauty contained in their works. Instead of writing only
two volumes of essays, Elia should have written a dozen. He had read,
heard, thought, and seen enough to furnish matter for twice that number.
He himself confesseth, in a letter written a year or two before his
death, that he felt as if he had a thousand essays swelling within him.
Oh that Elia, like Mr. Spectator, had printed himself out before he
died!

But notwithstanding Lamb's fame and popularity, notwithstanding
all readers of his inimitable essays lament that one who wrote so
delightfully as Elia did should have written so little, their has not