When straight the Spell would vanish into air,
And he enjoy for life the yielding fair."

At length he succeeds in this seemingly simple exploit, and in place
of the cat there springs up a huge man who foretells that when married
the King shall have a son afflicted with a huge nose, a son who shall
never be happy in his love:

Till he with tears his blemish shall confess
Discern its odious length and wish it less.

It is a pleasant little story marked with Lamb's keen sense of humour.

"Beauty and the Beast" is a booklet in verse for young readers. It was
published shortly after "Prince Dorus," and is believed--though the
evidence as to authorship is inconclusive--to have been written by
Charles or Mary Lamb. It is a simple rendering in Hudibrastic verse of
a familiar nursery story. Perhaps a very slight piece of evidence in
favour of the Lamb authorship may be found in the fact that it shares
with "Prince Dorus" the sub-title, "A Poetical Version of an Ancient
Tale."


CRITICISM

In the mid-part of the period during which Charles Lamb was writing,
either on his own account or in collaboration with his sister, the
books for children to which reference has just been made, he was also
engaged upon the work which was to bring him before the world as a
great critic, as the first of the Neo-Elizabethans if I may substitute