ESSAYS

In giving this summary account of Lamb's writings it has been thought
best only to keep to a very roughly chronological method, leaving his
letters to be touched upon last. Finding earliest expression in
poetry, he then turned to the drama, fully equipped with knowledge and
a fine enthusiasm, but lacking some of the most vitally essential
qualities necessary to success; he then passed more or less by force
of circumstance--the need of making money and the desire to help his
sister in her newly-found work--to the writing of prose and verse for
children; and later he began to make wider use of the fine critical
instinct of which he had given early indications in his
correspondence. All of these were to be in a measure overshadowed by
his achievement as essayist. That work as essayist was chiefly the
product of his prime--of the days of the "London Magazine"--but he had
made several notable contributions of this character during the
preceding twenty years; essays which are now to be found in different
posthumous collections of his writings--"Eliana," "Critical Essays,"
"Essays and Sketches," "Miscellaneous Prose," and so on. When, thanks
to the kindly offices of Coleridge, Lamb became a contributor to the
"Morning Post," he proposed to furnish some imitations of Burton, the
author of the "Anatomy of Melancholy," but these, not unnaturally,
being adjudged unsuitable for a daily newspaper found a place in the
"John Woodvil" volume of 1802. Yet it was in the journal named that on
1st February, 1802, appeared a brief Essay in the form of a letter on
"The Londoner." In this essay we have Lamb using the same phrases that
he had employed a year earlier in writing to Wordsworth. In 1811-14
Lamb was contributing essays (including "On the Inconveniences
Resulting from Being Hanged," "Recollections of Christ's Hospital,"