his "Every Day Book." Subsequently they were collected by Charles himself,
and formed a supplement to the earlier "Specimens." Lamb's labors in this
task were by no means trivial. "I am now going through a course of
reading" (of old plays), he writes; "I have two thousand to go through."

Lamb's correspondence with his Quaker friend, Bernard Barton ("the busy
B," as Hood called him), whose knowledge of the English drama was confined
to Shakespeare and Miss Baillie, went on constantly. His letters to this
gentleman comprised a variety of subjects, on most of which Charles offers
him good advice. Sometimes they are less personal, as where he tells him
that "six hundred have been sold of Hood's book, while Sion's songs do not
disperse so quickly;" and where he enters (very ably) into the defects and
merits of Martin's pictures, Belshazzar and Joshua, and ventures an
opinion as to what Art should and should not be. He is strenuous in
advising him not to forsake the Bank (where he is a clerk), and throw
himself on what the chance of employ by booksellers would afford. "Throw
yourself, rather, from the steep Tarpeian rock, headlong upon the iron
spikes. Keep to your bank, and your bank will keep you. Trust not to the
Public," he says. Then, referring to his own previous complaints of
official toil, he adds, "I retract all my fond complaints. Look on them as
lovers' quarrels. I was but half in earnest. Welcome, dead timber of a
desk that gives me life. A little grumbling is wholesome for the spleen;
but in my inner heart I do approve and embrace this our close but
unharassing way of life."

Lamb's opinions on books, as well as on conduct, making some deduction for
his preference of old writers, is almost always sound. When he is writing
to Mr. Walter Wilson, who is editing De Foe, he says of the famous author
of "Robinson Crusoe,"--