ndon, 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)

In De Quincey the romantic element is even more strongly developed than in
Lamb, not only in his critical work, but also in his erratic and
imaginative life. He was profoundly educated, even more so than Coleridge,
and was one of the keenest intellects of the age; yet his wonderful
intellect seems always subordinate to his passion for dreaming. Like Lamb,
he was a friend and associate of the Lake poets, making his headquarters in
Wordsworth's old cottage at Grasmere for nearly twenty years. Here the
resemblance ceases, and a marked contrast begins. As a man, Lamb is the
most human and lovable of all our essayists; while De Quincey is the most
uncanny and incomprehensible. Lamb's modest works breathe the two essential
qualities of sympathy and humor; the greater number of De Quincey's essays,
while possessing more or less of both these qualities, are characterized
chiefly by their brilliant style. Life, as seen through De Quincey's eyes,
is nebulous and chaotic, and there is a suspicion of the fabulous in all
tha