"In appearance of _truth_ his works exceed any works of fiction that I am
acquainted with. It is perfect illusion. It is like reading evidence in a
court of justice. There is all the minute detail of a log-book in it.
Facts are repeated in varying phrases till you cannot choose but believe
them." His liking for books (rather than his criticism on them) is shown
frequently in his letters. "O! to forget Fielding, Steele, &c., and to
read 'em _new_," he says. Of De Foe, "His style is everywhere beautiful,
but plain and homely." Again, he speaks of "Fielding, Smollett, Sterne,--
great Nature's stereotypes." "Milton," he says, "almost requires a solemn
service of music to be played before you enter upon him." Of Shenstone he
speaks as "the dear author of the Schoolmistress;" and so on from time to
time, as occasion prompts, of Bunyan, Isaac Walton, and Jeremy Taylor, and
Fuller, and Sir Philip Sidney, and others, in affectionate terms. These
always relate to English authors. Lamb, although a good Latinist, had not
much of that which ordinarily passes under the name of Learning. He had
little knowledge of languages, living or dead. Of French, German, Italian,
&c., he knew nothing; and in Greek his acquirements were very moderate.
These children of the tongues were never adopted by him; but in his own
Saxon English he was a competent scholar, a lover, nice, discriminative,
and critical.

The most graphic account of Lamb at a somewhat later period of his life
appears in Mr. N. P. Willis's "Pencillings by the Way." He had been
invited by a gentleman in the Temple, Mr. R---- (Robinson?), to meet
Charles Lamb and his sister at breakfast. The Lambs lived at that time "a
little way out of London, and were not quite punctual. At last they enter
--"the gentleman in black small-clothes and gaiters, short and very slight
in person, his head set on his shoulders with a thoughtful forward bent,
his hair just sprinkled with gray, a beautiful deep-set eye, an aquiline
nose, and a very indescribable mouth. Whether it expressed most humor or