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from that name without a meaning than from anything he has done, or can hope to do, in his own name. He was also the first to draw the public attention to the old English dramatists, in a work called 'Specimens of English Dramatic Writers who lived about the Time of Shakspeare,' published about fifteen years since. In short, all his merits and demerits to set forth would take to the end of Mr. Upcott's book, and then not be told truly.

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To this humorous account of himself it need only be added that he lived nine years after his retirement from the India Office, dying in 1834. His companion through life was a sister afflicted with attacks of insanity. In a fit of frenzy, when Lamb was but twenty-two, she killed their mother, and was placed in an asylum. When she recovered, Lamb undertook the charge of her. For her sake he remained unmarried, and devoted himself to this office with unremitting tenderness. Lamb's happy and genial nature, and his dependence on and affection for his friends, made him the delight of the society in which he lived.

Charles Lamb still remains one of the foremost English humorists of the nineteenth century. He reconciles, to a greater degree than any of his contemporaries or successors, the quaintness of those older authors, whom no one has ever more fully appreciated, with the common sense of his own age. His thought, like his life, was, by his own confession, fragmentary; but the broken pieces that are left to us are like broken gold, they sparkle with wit while they glow with a rich and genial humanity.

1. A Quakers' Meeting.

READER, would'st thou know what true peace and quiet mean; would'st thou find a refuge from the noises and

clamours of the multitude; would'st thou enjoy at once solitude and society; would'st thou possess the depth of thine own spirit in stillness, without being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species; would'st thou be alone and yet accompanied; solitary yet not desolate; singular, yet not without some to keep thee in countenance; a unit in aggregate; a simple in composite :-come with me into a Quakers' Meeting.

Dost thou love silence deep as that 'before the winds were made?' go not out into the wilderness, descend not into the profundities of the earth; shut not up thy casements; nor pour wax into the little cells of thy ears, with little-faithed, self-mistrusting Ulysses:―retire with me into a Quakers' Meeting. . . . . . Frequently it is broken up without a word having been spoken. But the mind has been fed. You go away with a sermon not made with hands. You have been in the milder caverns of Trophonius; or as in some den, where that fiercest and savagest of all wild creatures, the Tongue, that unruly member, has strangely lain tied up and captive. You have bathed with stillness.-O, when the spirit is sore fretted, even tired to sickness of the janglings and nonsense-noises of the world, what a balm and a solace it is to go and seat yourself for a quiet half-hour upon some undisputed corner of a bench among the gentle Quakers. Their garb and stillness conjoined, present a uniformity, tranquil and herd-like-as in the pasture-forty feeding like one.'- The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of receiving a soil; and cleanliness in them to be something more than the absence of its contrary. Every Quakeress is a lily; and when they come up in bands to their Whitsunconferences, whitening the easterly streets of the metropolis, from all parts of the United Kingdom, they show like troops of the Shining Ones.-Essays of Elia.

2. The Scotchman.

I CANNOT like all people alike. I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot like me-and in truth, I never knew one of that nation who attempted to do it. We know one another at first sight. There is an order of imperfect intellects (under which mine must be content to rank) which in its constitution is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners of the sort of faculties I allude to, have minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. They have no pretences to much clearness or precision in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They are content with fragments and scattered pieces of Truth. They beat up a little game and leave it to knottier heads to run it down. The light that lights them is not steady and polar, but mutable and shifting; waxing and again waning They cannot speak always as if they were upon their oath . . . . they are no systematizers, and would but err more by attempting it.... The brain of a true Caledonian is constituted upon quite a different plan. His Minerva is born in panoply. You are never admitted to see his ideas in their growth, if indeed they do grow, and are not rather put together upon principles of clock-work. You never catch his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests anything, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order . . . . His riches are always about him. . . . You cannot cry halves to anything that he finds. He does not find but bring. You never witness his first apprehension of a thing. His understanding is always at its meridian.... The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he orthodox-he has no doubts. Is he an infidel- he has none either.. . . He

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always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions with him, for he sets you right. His taste never fluctuates. His morality never abates. . . . You must speak upon the square with him. He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an enemy's country. A healthy book,' said one

of his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give that appellation to John Buncle. Did I catch rightly what you said? I have heard of a man in health, and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see how that epithet can be properly applied to a book.' Above all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Remember you are upon your oath. I have a print of a graceful female after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing off to Mr.- —. After he had examined it minutely I ventured to ask him how he liked My Beauty, (a foolish name it goes by among my friends) when he very gravely assured me, that he had considerable respect for my character and talents' (so he was pleased to say) 'but had not given himself much thought about the degree of my personal pretensions'.... Persons of this nation are particularly fond of affirming a truth which nobody doubts... I was present not long since at a party of North Britons where a son of Burns was expected, and happened to drop a silly expression (in my South British way) that I wished it were the father instead of the son, when four of them started up at once to inform me that 'that was impossible, because he was dead.-Essays of Elia.

3. The Beggar.

Poor man reproaches poor man in the street with impolitic mention of his condition, his own being a shade better; while the rich pass by and jeer at both. No rascal, comparatively, insults a beggar, or thinks of weighing purses with him. He is not in the scale of comparison. He is not under the measure of property. He confessedly hath pone, No one twitteth him with

any more than a dog or a sheep. ostentation above his means. No one accuses him of pride, or upbraideth him with mock humility. None jostle with him for the wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No wealthy neighbour seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I were not the independent gentleman that I am, rather than I would be a retainer to the great, a led captive, or a poor relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy and true greatness of my mind, to be a Beggar.

Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the Beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession—his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public. He is never out of the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is not required to put on Court mourning. He weareth all colours, fearing none. His costume hath undergone less change than the Quaker's. He is the only man in the universe who is not obliged to study appearances. The ups and downs of the world concern him no longer. He alone continueth in one stay. The price of stock or land affecteth him not. The fluctuations of prosperity at worst but change his customers. is not expected to become bail or surety for any one. No man troubleth him with questioning his religion or politics. He is the only free man in the universe.—Essays of Elia.

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