r, as
opposite as the Antipodes. His mind is after all rather the recipient and
transmitter of knowledge, than the originator of it. He has hardly grasp
of thought enough to arrive at any great leading truth. His passions do
not amount to more than irritability. With some gall in his pen, and
coldness in his manner, he has a great deal of kindness in his heart. Rash
in his opinions, he is steady in his attachments--and is a man, in many
particulars admirable, in all respectable--his political inconsistency
alone excepted!

XIII

ELIA

So Mr. Charles Lamb chooses to designate himself; and as his lucubrations
under this _nom de guerre_ have gained considerable notice from the
public, we shall here attempt to describe his style and manner, and to
point out his beauties and defects.

Mr. Lamb, though he has borrowed from previous sources, instead of
availing himself of the most popular and admired, has groped out his way,
and made his most successful researches among the more obscure and
intricate, though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our
writers. He has raked among the dust and cobwebs of a remote period, has
exhibited specimens of curious relics, and pored over moth-eaten, decayed
manuscripts, for the benefit of the more inquisitive and discerning part
of the public. Antiquity after a time has the grace of novelty, as old
fashions revived are mistaken for new ones; and a certain quaintness and
singularity of style is an agreeable relief to the smooth and insipid
monotony of modern composition. Mr. Lamb has succeeded not by conforming
to the _Spirit of the Age_, but in opposition to it. He does not march
boldly along with the crowd, but steals off the pavement to pick his way
in the contrary direction. He prefers _bye-ways_ to _highways_. When the
full tide of human life pours along to some festive show, to some pageant
of a day, Elia would stand on one side to look over an old book-stall, or
stroll down some deserted pathway in search of a pensive description over
a tottering door-way, or some quaint device in architecture, illustrative
of embryo art and ancient manners. Mr. Lamb has the very soul of an
antiquarian, as this implies a reflecting humanity; the film of the past
hovers for ever before him. He is shy, sensitive, the reverse of every
thing coarse, vulgar, obtrusive, and _common-place_. He would fain
"shuffle off this mortal coil," and his spirit clothes itself in the garb
of elder ti