added to its sources of pleasure.' The genius of Elia was too original to have long lain dormant, even if it had not been aroused by contact with a more active and, in some respects, a greater spirit. Coleridge merely gave an impulse to Lamb's powers, which, had they never met, the natural growth of his understanding would certainly have developed in time. Nor, indeed, were Lamb's finest writings produced till he had come under more varied intellectual influences than the society of Coleridge, however vast his powers, and however extensive his erudition, could possibly have supplied.

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The poetical talent, which now became apparent, was probably awakened less by the society of Coleridge, than by an attachment Lamb formed, late in the year 1795, for a young lady living in the neighbourhood of Islington. We know little of the history of his love. He speaks frequently in his Essays of Alice W- -n, the fair haired maid," "with eyes of watchet hue;" but whether the half-indicated name was a real or assumed one, or whether her name was Anna, to whom some of his love sonnets are addressed, perhaps no one can now determine. Whether his suit prospered or not, we cannot tell. There is a hint in one of Lamb's letters to Coleridge, that a short period of insanity, from which he suffered in 1796, was produced by this love affair. "My mind ran upon you in my madness," he writes, "as much, almost, as upon another person who I am inclined to think was the more immediate cause of my temporary phrensy." However it was, the wooing was of short duration. In the autumn of 1796 came the tragical event that clouded, if it did not altogether sadden, the whole of his after life; and, in view of the responsibilities

which it entailed, he relinquished an attachment which he felt would interfere with their fulfilment.

There was an hereditary tendency to insanity in the Lamb family. Charles himself, it has been said, had for a short time suffered from it, and had spent six weeks in an asylum at Hoxton. The malady next seized his sister, with fatal violence. Mary Lamb, worn down with a constant and harassing struggle with poverty (for they were very poor), had been for some time in bad health, which at last resulted in madness. On the 22nd of September, in a fit of sudden phrenzy, she seized a knife from the dinner-table and stabbed her bedridden mother to the heart.

At the coroner's inquest, which was held next day, the jury returned a verdict of lunacy; and Mary Lamb was removed to an asylum, where she gradually recovered her reason.

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Charles at first bore this sudden and awful blow with an unnatural calmness, which perhaps preserved him from madness. The responsibility that was thrown upon him, however, soon called forth the latent strength of his character. He felt, to use his own words, that he "had something else to do than regret.' He saw that if his father was to have those comforts which his age and infirmities rendered indispensable, and if his sister was ever to be restored to the soothing occupations and endearments of home, instead of being permanently consigned to a mad-house, it must be through his own exertions. His brother John, though holding a lucrative place in the South Sea House, with a selfishness which, notwithstanding Charles's affectionate excuses, it is impossible to forgive, never even hinted a desire to share the heavy

burden which was thus cast upon him. Charles Lamb felt that he could not contemplate any connection which would interfere with the performance of these sacred duties; and, in accordance with this conviction, his love for the unknown "fair-haired maid" was deliberately and resolutely sacrificed.

During the few months that his father survived Mrs. Lamb's death, Charles gave up almost the whole of his precious leisure to him, and complied cheerfully with all his childish caprices. A letter to Coleridge, dated December 2nd, 1796, gives us a glimpse of the trials he had to undergo to humour and amuse his father. "I am got home," he writes, "and, after repeated games of cribbage, have got my father's leave to write awhile; with difficulty got it, for when I expostulated about playing any more, he very aptly replied, "If you won't play with me, you might as well not come home at all.' The argument was unanswerable, and I set to afresh."

Charles Lamb's first care, on Mr. Lamb's death early in 1796, was to release his sister from confinement. This was opposed by his brother John, and some other members of the family, who thought that, as there could be no assurance given that her madness would not return, she ought to be placed under permanent restraint. But Charles was resolute; and, on his entering into a solemn engagement that he would take care of her and support her through life, he was permitted to remove her to his home. From that time they were hardly separated for a day, except when the return of Mary Lamb's illness rendered it necessary that she should be placed under temporary restraint. His income at this time was only a little more than a hundred a-year; but he always had a reserve fund

sufficient for these emergencies. He watched over his sister's health with painful care; and through life bore the heartbreaking anxiety occasioned by her precarious state, and frequent relapses-and which, to a man of his exquisite sensibility, must have been so much more terrible than the presence of any actual misfortune-if not without a murmur, yet with a loving effort to spare her the knowledge of the anguish he sometimes endured. Perhaps this life-long devotion was more truly heroic even than the sacrifice of his love. Many a man capable of the one act of self-abnegation might yet have missed this loving

to the level of every day's

Most quiet need.

Mary Lamb was always conscious of the approach of her illnesses, and submitted voluntarily to medical treatment. Charles Lloyd once met the brother and sister in the fields near Hoxton, both weeping bitterly, walking hand in hand towards the asylum.

Charles Lamb's first efforts in literature were poetical. In 1797, in conjunction with Coleridge and Charles Lloyd, he published a few poems and sonnets; and, in 1798, appeared a little volume entitled "Blank Verse, by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb." His poetry never excited much attention; and though it was perhaps undeservedly sneered at by reviews, there can be little doubt it would have been forgotten long ago if it had not been written by the author of the " Essays of Elia." His sonnets can hardly be called more than pleasing; but some of his miscellaneous pieces, such as "Hester," "The Old Familiar Faces," "The Farewell to Tobacco," "On an

Infant Dying as soon as Born," are certainly far above the average of modern verse.

In 1798, also, appeared the simple and touching tale, "Rosamund Gray;" and the following year found Lamb busy with his tragedy, "John Woodvil." It was submitted when finished to John Kemble, who was then manager of Drury Lane Theatre, but was rejected. The farce, "Mr. H.," Lamb's only other considerable dramatic attempt, met with scarcely a better fate. It was accepted, produced, and decisively damned on the first night. The " 'Essays of Elia," on which alone Lamb's claim to a name great in literature can be founded, were almost all published during the last fourteen years of his life. He was then in the maturity of his powers, and he poured forth his original thoughts and quaint fancies with a richness and variety which no other essayist has ever rivalled. He had every qualification for an essayist. He had learnt English from the best teachers-the old writers; and he had been an apt scholar, not accumulating merely, but assimilating what he learnt. His early style (as in "John Woodvil," for instance,) is often antiquated; but in the Essays of Elia" there is no trace of an excessive or servile adherence to the manner of his models. Few writers, indeed, have had a more real command of English than Lamb had. He was not restrained or impeded by the exigencies of the language; he rather controlled it, and moulded it, so to speak, to his purposes. It might be possible, by a careful study and imitation of Addison or Goldsmith, to form a good independent style of composition. Their English is flexible; it can adapt itself, without much difficulty (except, of course, on account of its surpassing beauty), to the

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