and the latter the comedies—­may be regarded as his first successful literary venture.  The book was written primarily for children; but so thoroughly had brother and sister steeped themselves in the literature of the Elizabethan period that young and old alike were delighted with this new version of Shakespeare’s stories, and the Tales are still regarded as the best of their kind in our literature.  In 1808 appeared his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare.  This carried out the splendid critical work of Coleridge, and was the most noticeable influence in developing the poetic qualities of Keats, as shown in his last volume.

The third period includes Lamb’s criticisms of life, which are gathered together in his Essays of Elia (1823), and his Last Essays of Elia, which were published ten years later.  These famous essays began in 1820 with the appearance of the new London Magazine[232] and were continued for many years, such subjects as the “Dissertation on Roast Pig,” “Old China,” “Praise of Chimney Sweepers,” “Imperfect Sympathies,” “A Chapter on Ears,” “Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist,” “Mackery End,” “Grace Before Meat,” “Dream Children,” and many others being chosen apparently at random, but all leading to a delightful interpretation of the life of London, as it appeared to a quiet little man who walked unnoticed through its crowded streets.  In the first and last essays which we have mentioned, “Dissertation on Roast Pig” and “Dream Children,” we have the extremes of Lamb’s humor and pathos.

The style of all these essays is gentle, old-fashioned, irresistibly attractive.  Lamb was especially fond of old writers and borrowed unconsciously from the style of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and from Browne’s Religio Medici and from the early English dramatists.  But this style had become a part of Lamb by long reading, and he was apparently unable to express his new thought without using their old quaint expressions.  Though these essays are all criticisms or appreciations of the life of his age, they are all intensely personal.  In other words, they are an excellent picture of Lamb and of humanity.  Without a trace of vanity or self-assertion, Lamb begins with himself, with some purely personal mood or experience, and from this he leads the reader to see life and literature as he saw it.  It is this wonderful combination of personal and universal interests, together with Lamb’s rare old style and quaint humor, which make the essays remarkable.  They continue the best tradition of Addison and Steele, our first great essayists; but their sympathies are broader and deeper, and their humor more delicious than any which preceded them.

THOMAS DE QUINCY (1785-1859)