accident if they needed an
external commentary. But they do _not_. The syllables lurk up and down
the writings of Lamb, which decipher his eccentric nature. His character
lies there dispersed in anagram; and to any attentive reader the
re-gathering and restoration of the total word from its scattered parts
is inevitable without an effort. Still it is always a satisfaction in
knowing a result, to know also its _why_ and _how_; and in so far as
every character is likely to be modified by the particular experience,
sad or joyous, through which the life has traveled, it is a good
contribution towards the knowledge of that resulting character as a
whole to have a sketch of that particular experience. What trials did it
impose? What energies did it task? What temptations did it unfold? These
calls upon the moral powers, which in music so stormy many a life is
doomed to hear,--how were they faced? The character in a capital degree
molds oftentimes the life, but the life _always_ in a subordinate degree
molds the character. And the character being in this case of Lamb so
much of a key to the writings, it becomes important that the life should
be traced, however briefly, as a key to the character.

DESPAIR

From 'Confessions of an English Opium-Eater'

Then suddenly would come a dream of far different character--a
tumultuous dream--commencing with a music such as now I often heard in
sleep, music of preparation and of awakening suspense. The undulations
of fast gathering tumults were like the opening of the Coronation
Anthem; and like that, gave the feeling of a multitudinous movement, of
infinite cavalcades filing off, and the tread of innumerable armies. The
morning was come of a mighty day--a day of crisis and of ultimate hope
for human nature, then suffering mysterious eclipse, and laboring in
some dread extremity. Somewhere, but I knew not where,--somehow, but I
knew not how,--by some beings, but I knew not by whom,--a battle, a
strife, an agony, was traveling through all its stages,--was evolving
itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty drama; with which my
sympathy was the more insupportable from deepening confusion as to its
local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I (as
is usual in dreams, where of necessity we make ourselves central to
every movement) had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it.
I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it; and yet again had
not