ee Wordsworth's _Triad_.

CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834)

There are not many people about whom it is more
difficult--or more unnecessary--to write than it is about
Lamb. A few very unfortunate people do not enjoy him, and
probably never could be made to do so. Most of those who
care for literature at all revel in him: and do not in the
least need to be told to do so. And, as was said before,
there is hardly any difference between his published works
and his letters except that the former stand a little--a
very little--more "upon ceremony." As to selecting the
letters one remembers Mr. Matthew Arnold's very agreeable
confession, when he was asked to select his poems, that he
wanted to select them all. This being impossible, one has to
confess that, putting subject, scale etc. aside, any one is
almost as tempting as any other, and that whatever is chosen
reminds one, half-regretfully, of the letters that were
left. When a man can write (to William Wordsworth too), "The
very head and sum of the girlery were two young girls,"
there is nothing left to do but to repeat, with the slight
alteration of "write to" for "ask," Thackeray's ejaculation
to the supposed host at an unusually satisfactory dinner,
"Dear Sir! do _ask_ us again." And on almost every page of
his letters, whether in Talfourd's original issue of them or
in the more recent and fuller editions of his works, the
spirit is the same everywhere: the volume only differs. If
(but you never know exactly when Lamb is speaking seriously)
at the time he had "an aversion from letter writing," then
most certainly Mrs. Malaprop was justified in saying that
there "is nothing like beginning with a little aversion"!
The letter which follows is, though it may have pleased
others besides myself, not one of the stock examples. But
it seems to me to present a rather unusual combination of
Lamb's attractive qualities, not a little of his rare phrase
("divine plain face" especially) and a remarkable expression
of that yearning for _solitude_ which some people seem to
think rather shameful, but which to others is a thing no
more to be accounted for than it is to be got rid of. It
will be observed that the letter, ostensibly to Mrs. W., is
really both to her and to her husband. "W. H." is of c