at is touched with cross
lights of pathos, together with the picturesque quaintness of the
objects casually described, whether men, or things, or usages; and in
the rear of all this, the constant recurrence to ancient recollections
and to decaying forms of household life, as things retiring before the
tumult of new and revolutionary generations;--these traits in
combination communicate to the papers a grace and strength of
originality which nothing in any literature approaches, whether for
degree or kind of excellence, except the most felicitous papers of
Addison, such as those on Sir Roger de Coverley, and some others in the
same vein of composition. They resemble Addison's papers also in the
diction, which is natural and idiomatic even to carelessness. They are
equally faithful to the truth of nature; and in this only they differ
remarkably--that the sketches of Elia reflect the stamp and impress of
the writer's own character, whereas in all those of Addison the personal
peculiarities of the delineator (though known to the reader from the
beginning through the account of the club) are nearly quiescent. Now and
then they are recalled into a momentary notice, but they do not act, or
at all modify his pictures of Sir Roger or Will Wimble. _They_ are
slightly and amiably eccentric; but the Spectator himself, in describing
them, takes the station of an ordinary observer.

Everywhere, indeed, in the writings of Lamb, and not merely in his
'Elia,' the character of the writer co-operates in an undercurrent to
make the effect of the thing written. To understand in the fullest sense
either the gayety or the tenderness of a particular passage, you must
have some insight into the peculiar bias of the writer's mind, whether
native and original, or impressed gradually by the accidents of
situation; whether simply developed out of predispositions by the action
of life, or violently scorched into the constitution by some fierce
fever of calamity. There is in modern literature a whole class of
writers, though not a large one, standing within the same category; some
marked originality of character in the writer becomes a coefficient with
what he says to a common result; you must sympathize with this
_personality_ in the author before you can appreciate the most
significant parts of his views. In most books the writer figures as a
mere abstraction, without sex or age or local station, whom the reader
banishes from his thoughts. What is