ve powers in a
writer, from special originalities such as rarely reflect themselves
in the mirror of the ordinary understanding. It seems little to be
perceived, how much the great Scriptural idea of the worldly and the
unworldly is found to emerge in literature as well as in life.

In reality, the very same combinations of moral qualities, infinitely
varied, which compose the harsh physiognomy of what we call
worldliness in the living groups of life, must unavoidably present
themselves in books. A library divides into sections of worldly and
unworldly, even as a crowd of men divides into that same majority and
minority. The world has an instinct for recognizing its own, and
recoils from certain qualities when exemplified in books with the same
disgust or defective sympathy as would have governed it in real life.
From qualities, for instance, of childlike simplicity, of shy
profundity, or of inspired self-communion, the world does and must
turn away its face toward grosser, bolder, more determined, or more
intelligible expressions of character and intellect; and not otherwise
in literature, nor at all less in literature, than it does in the
realities of life.

Charles Lamb, if any ever was, is amongst the class here contemplated;
he, if any ever has, ranks amongst writers whose works are destined to
be forever unpopular, and yet forever interesting; interesting
moreover by means of those very qualities which guarantee their
non-popularity. The same qualities which will be found forbidding to
the worldly and the thoughtless, which will be found insipid to many
even amongst robust and powerful minds, are exactly those which will
continue to command a select audience in every generation. The prose
essays, under the signature of "Elia," form the most delightful
section amongst Lamb's works. They traverse a peculiar field of
observation, sequestered from general interest; and they are composed
in a spirit too delicate and unobtrusive to catch the ear of the noisy
crowd, clamoring for strong sensations. But this retiring delicacy
itself, the pensiveness checkered by gleams of the fanciful, and the
humor that 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 rev