fondness for hoaxing his friends with invented news about other
friends, or with questions on supposititious problems set forth as
actualities.

The next essay, "The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers," might be cited as
one of those most fully representing the characteristics of Lamb's
work as essayist. It has its touches of personal reminiscences, it
deals with an out-of-the-way subject in a surprisingly engaging
manner, and it is full of those quaint turns of expression, those more
or less recondite words which Elia re-introduced from the older
writers, Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, etc., as he had
re-introduced the dramatic writings of the seventeenth century. Here
is a passage which may be said to be thoroughly representative at once
of Elia's manner of looking at things, as well as his own manner of
describing them. Elia is discussing "Saloop."

I know not by what particular conformation of the organ it
happens, but I have always found that this composition is
surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young
chimney-sweeper--whether the oily particles (sassafras is
slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous
concretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to
adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged
practitioners; or whether Nature, sensible that she had
mingled too much of bitter wood in the lot of these raw
victims, caused to grow out of the earth her sassafras for a
sweet lenitive; but so it is, that no possible taste or
odour to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a
delicate excitement comparable to this mixture. Being
penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the