h bears his name. In the French Salon in spring,
"The Execution of Lady Jane Grey in the Tower," by Paul Hippolyte
Delaroche, took the highest prize. The picture was a happy medium between
the ultra-romantic method of Delacroix and the classicism of David. Three
years previous to this, Delaroche sent to the Salon his famous paintings
"Cromwell at the Bier of Charles I.," and "The Children of Edward IV. in
the Tower." At this same time he was engaged on the greatest of his works,
"The Hemicycle," now in the Hall of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris.
England lost three men prominent in letters, Blackwood, Lamb, and
Coleridge. Blackwood's contribution to English letters was the "Edinburgh
Magazine," founded and maintained by him from 1817 until his death.

[Sidenote: Charles Lamb]

[Sidenote: "Essays of Elia"]

Charles Lamb appeared in the world of letters as "Elia," a fancifully
adopted name of an Italian fellow clerk at the South Sea House, where Lamb
served his literary apprenticeship. While serving as a clerk for the South
Sea Company he published his first poems at the age of twenty-two, followed
shortly by "Rosamond Gray" and "John Woodville," at the beginning of the
century. With his sister Mary he shared in the publication of the two
children's books, "Tales from Shakespeare" (1806), and "Poetry for
Children" (1809). During this same period he compiled and edited the famous
"Specimens of Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare." The "Essays of
Elia," which made Lamb's reputation, did not appear until 1823. The charm
of these essays is a frank note of autobiography tempered by a kindly humor
and whimsicality peculiar to Lamb. His fond appreciation of the poetry of
Elizabethan days, as revealed in these essays, was instrumental in bringing
about that revival of Shakespeare and old English poetry which set in early
in the Nineteenth Century.

[Sidenote: Death of Coleridge]

Thus it happened that Lamb and Coleridge were intimately associated. Lamb's
first poems appeared in a volume of Coleridge's. Lamb repaid the debt by
his tribute to Coleridge in his letters. There he has aptly described him
as a "logician, metaphysician and bard." It so happened that both friends,
who were almost of the same age, died in the same year.

[Sidenote: The "Lake School"]

[Sidenote: "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"]

[Sidenote: Swinburne on Coleridge]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772 at Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire,