comparison, is always dangerous, and the dangers are doubled when the
subjects illustrated and compared are favourite authors. It behoves us
to proceed warily in this matter. A dispute as to the respective
merits of Gray and Collins has been known to result in a visit to an
attorney and the revocation of a will. An avowed inability to see
anything in Miss Austen's novels is reported to have proved
destructive of an otherwise good chance of an Indian judgeship. I
believe, however, I run no great risk in asserting that, of all
English authors, Charles Lamb is the one loved most warmly and
emotionally by his admirers, amongst whom I reckon only those who are
as familiar with the four volumes of his 'Life and Letters' as with
'Elia.'

But how does he illustrate the particular question now engaging our
attention?

Speaking of his sister Mary, who, as everyone knows, throughout 'Elia'
is called his Cousin Bridget, he says:

'It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener, perhaps, than I could have
wished, to have had for her associates and mine freethinkers, leaders
and disciples of novel philosophies and systems, but she neither
wrangles with nor accepts their opinions.'

Nor did her brother. He lived his life cracking his little jokes and
reading his great folios, neither wrangling with nor accepting the
opinions of the friends he loved to see around him. To a contemporary
stranger it might well have appeared as if his life were a frivolous
and useless one as compared with those of these philosophers and
thinkers. _They_ discussed their great schemes and affected to