are not foolish," as you may read in Elia's words; and "All fools' day"
may cheer you, as the fool in "Lear" may make you wise and tolerant.

I could go on for many pages--to the poor relations, and the old books,
and the old actors; to Dodd, who "dying put on the weeds of Dominic;" and
to Mrs. Jordan and Dickey Suet (both whom I well remember); to Elliston,
always on the stage; to Munden, with features ever changing; and to
Liston, with only one face: "But what a face!" I forbear. I pass also over
Comberbatch (Coleridge), borrower of books, and Captain Jackson, and
Barbara S. (Miss Kelly), and go to the rest of my little history. The
"Popular Fallacies," which in course of time followed, and were eventually
added to the second series and re-published, are in manner essays also on
a small scale, brief and dealing with abstract subjects more than the
"Elia." It may be interesting to know that Lamb's two favorites were "That
home is home, though it is never so homely," and "That we should rise with
the lark." In the first of these he enters into all the discomforts and
terrible distractions of a poor man's home; in the second he descants on
the luxuries of bed, and the nutritious value of dreams: "The busy part of
mankind," he says, "are content to swallow their sleep by wholesale: we
choose to linger in bed and digest our dreams." The last "Fallacy" is
remarkable for a sentence which seems to refer to Alice W.: "We were never
much in the world," he says; "disappointment early struck a dark veil
between us and its dazzling illusions:" he then concludes with, "We once
thought life to be something; but it has unaccountably fallen from us
before its time. The sun has no purposes of ours to light us to. Why
should we get up?"

It will be observed by the sagacious student of the entire Essays, that
however quaint or familiar, or (rarely, however) sprinkled with classical
allusions, they are never vulgar, nor commonplace, nor pedantic. They are