were just as much part of
the whole scheme as were his celibacy and his relation to his sister.

What one can really gather from Lamb is nothing less than a very
wise and very subtle "way of life," a way that, amid many
outrageous experiences, will be found singularly lucky.

In the first place, let it be noted, Lamb deliberately cultivates the art
of "transforming the commonplace." It is as absurd to deny the
existence of this element--from which we all suffer--as it is to
maintain that it cannot be changed. It _can_ be changed. That is
precisely what this kind of rare genius does. It is a miracle, of course,
but everything in art is a miracle.

Nature tosses out indiscriminately her motley productions, and if
you are born for such "universalism," you may swallow them
wholesale. The danger of such a downright manner of going to work
is that it blunts one's critical sense. If you swallow everything just as
it is, you _taste_ very little. But Charles Lamb is nothing if not
"critical," nothing if not an Epicure, and his manner of dealing with
the "commonplace" sharpens rather than blunts the edge of one's
taste.

And what is this manner? It is nothing less than an indescribable
blending of Christianity and Paganism. Heine, another of Carlyle's
"blackguards," achieves the same synthesis. It is this spiritual
achievement--at once a religious and an aesthetic triumph--that
makes Elia, for all his weaknesses, such a really great man.
The Wordsworths and Coleridges who patronized him were too
self-opiniated and individualistic to be able to enter into either
tradition.

Wordsworth is neither a Christian or a Pagan. He is a moral
philosopher. Elia is an artist, who understands the _importance of
ritual_ in life--but of naturalness in ritual.

How difficult, whether as a thinker or a man, is it to be natural in
one's loves and hates! How many quite authoritative Philistines
never really let the world know how Bohemian at heart they are!
And how much of our modern "artistic feeling" is a pure affectation!
Now, whatever Elia was not, he was wantonly, wickedly, whimsically
natural.

He never concealed his religious feelings, his superstitious feelings.
He never concealed his fancies, his fads, his manias, his vices. He
never concealed his emotion when he felt a thrill of passionate faith.
He never concealed it when he felt a thrill of blasphemous doubt.

He accepted life's little pleasures as they appeared, and did not