note always in the work of your born essayist. He discourses high
truth or fresh philosophy, truest poetry, richest wit, or the most
delicate humour, he presents personal experiences with that simplicity
of pure camaraderie which assumes that the reader could do the
same--if he had the mind, as Lamb himself put it when wittily snubbing
Wordsworth. In most books, as De Quincey has pointed out, the author
figures as a mere abstraction, "without sex or age or local station,"
whom the reader banishes from his thoughts, but in the case of Lamb
and that brilliant line of authors to which he belongs, we must know
something of the man himself, and as I have said earlier, we get it
abundantly scattered up and down his writings. Even if we do not
happen to be acquainted with the actual biography, we can build up in
our minds on reading the essays of Elia a life story not far removed
from actuality, though it would be wanting in any hint of tragedy. It
is this intimacy which at once attracts and repels readers, attracts
all those who are, in however small a degree, kindred spirits, and
repels, perhaps, others. The quaintness, oddity, flippancy, are
wrought together with deep thought, poetry, and feeling to a wonderful
degree. The very diversity of theme and manner--this varying change
from grave to gay, from lively to severe--is indeed but a reflection
of life itself, which with the most fortunate of us dashes our smiles
with tears, and even to the most unfortunate imparts something of
pleasure and delight.

The "Essays of Elia" may fittingly be dealt with as at once the most
representative and the finest of his writings. Great as is the range
of their subjects, it will be found that they are more or less unified
by the author's individuality both in point of view and in treatment,
that they are all informed with what has been termed Lamb's calm and
self-reposing spirit, that they are all more or less strongly marked