n a book, the _Essays of Elia_, and
established Lamb's reputation as one of the great masters of English.
Another volume of _Essays of Elia_ was published in 1833. In 1834 Lamb
sorrowed over the death of Coleridge, and in November of the same year
death came to him. Of all English critics Carlyle is the only one who
had hard words for Lamb, and the Sage of Chelsea probably wrote his
scornful comment because of some playful jest of Elia.

Charles Lamb's taste was for the writers of the Elizabethan age, and
even in his time he found that this taste had become old-fashioned. He
complained, when only twenty-one years old, in a letter to Coleridge,
that all his friends "read nothing but reviews and new books." His
letters, like his essays, reflect the reading of little-known books;
they show abundant traces of his loiterings in the byways of
literature.

Here there is space only to dwell on some of the best of the _Essays
of Elia_. In these we find the most pathetic deal with the sufferings
of children. Lamb himself had known loneliness and suffering and lack
of appreciation when a boy in the great Blue Coat School. Far more
vividly than Dickens he brings before us his neglected childhood and
all that it represented in lonely helplessness. Then he deals with
later things, with his love of old books, his passion for the play,
his delight in London and its various aspects, his joy in all strange
characters like the old benchers of the Inner Temple.

[Illustration: MARY AND CHARLES LAMB FROM THE PAINTING BY F.S.
CARY MADE IN 1834]

The essay opens with that alluring picture of the South Sea house, and
is followed by the reminiscences of Christ's Hospital, where Lamb
was a schoolboy for seven years. These show one side of Lamb's
nature--the quaintly reminiscent. Another side is revealed in "Mrs.
Battle's Opinions on Whist," with its delicate irony and its playful
humor, while still another phase is seen in the exquisite phantasy of
"Dream Children," with its tender pathos and its revelation of a heart
that never knew the joys of domestic love and care. Yet close after
this beautiful reverie comes "A Dissertation On Roast Pig," in which
Lamb develops the theory that the Chinese first discovered the virtues
of roast suckling pig after a fire which destroyed the house of Ho-ti,
and that with the fatuousness of the race they regularly burned down
their houses to enjoy this succulent delicacy.

_The Last Essays of Elia_, a