d sign.
_That_ argues power. Hatred may be promising. The deepest revolutions of
mind sometimes begin in hatred. But simply to have left a reader
unimpressed is in itself a neutral result, from which the inference is
doubtful. Yet even _that_, even simple failure to impress, may happen at
times to be a result from positive powers in a writer, from special
originalities such as rarely reflect themselves in the mirror of the
ordinary understanding. It seems little to be perceived, how much the
great Scriptural idea of the _worldly_ and the _unworldly_ is found to
emerge in literature as well as in life. In reality, the very same
combinations of moral qualities, infinitely varied, which compose the
harsh physiognomy of what we call worldliness in the living groups of
life, must unavoidably present themselves in books. A library divides
into sections of worldly and unworldly, even as a crowd of men divides
into that same majority and minority. The world has an instinct for
recognizing its own, and recoils from certain qualities when exemplified
in books, with the same disgust or defective sympathy as would have
governed it in real life. From qualities for instance of childlike
simplicity, of shy profundity, or of inspired self-communion, the world
does and must turn away its face towards grosser, bolder, more
determined, or more intelligible expressions of character and intellect;
and not otherwise in literature, nor at all less in literature, than it
does, in the realities of life.

Charles Lamb, if any ever was, is amongst the class here contemplated;
he, if any ever has, ranks amongst writers whose works are destined to
be forever unpopular, and yet forever interesting; interesting moreover
by means of those very qualities which guarantee their non-popularity.
The same qualities which will be found forbidding to the worldly and the
thoughtless, which will be found insipid to many even amongst robust and
powerful minds, are exactly those which will continue to command a
select audience in every generation. The prose essays, under the
signature of "Elia," form the most delightful section amongst Lamb's
works. They traverse a peculiar field of observation, sequestered from
general interest: and they are composed in a spirit too delicate and
unobtrusive to catch the ear of the noisy crowd, clamoring for strong
sensations. But this retiring delicacy itself, the pensiveness checkered
by gleams of the fanciful, and the humor th