duplicate, that I may return in an equal number to your
welcome presents--

I think I am indebted to you for a sonnet in the London for
August.

Since I saw you I have been in France, and have eaten frogs.
The nicest little rabbity things you ever tasted. Do look
about for them. Make Mrs. Clare pick off the hind quarters,
boil them plain, with parsley and butter. The
four [crossed out] fore quarters are not so good. She may
let them hop off by themselves. Yours sincerely, Cha^s
Lamb.




THE ESSAYS OF ELIA


"Shakespeare himself might have read them and Hamlet have acted them;
for truly was our excellent friend of the genuine line of Yorick."
Thus it was that Leigh Hunt referred to the essays which without doubt
stand as the most characteristic of Charles Lamb's contributions to
literature. His reputation, as was recognized and acknowledged within
a few years of his death, "will ultimately rest on the Essays of Elia,
than which our literature rejoices in few things finer."

The intimate footing upon which he puts himself and his reader, is
perhaps not so much a peculiarity of his own as it is the dominant