nothing, less than nothing, and dreams. We
are only what might have been, and must wait upon the
tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have
existence, and a name"--and immediately awaking, I found
myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had
fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my
side--but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever.

This little essay, the most beautiful of the series, is as essentially
pathetic as anything in our literature, bringing tears to the eyes at
every reading though known almost by heart.

The essay on "Distant Correspondents," in the form of a playful
epistle to a friend, B. F. (_i.e._, Barron Field, also a contributor
to the "London Magazine") has much that is characteristic of the
writer. In it he plays--as he does in other letters to distant
friends--on the way in which "this confusion of tenses, this grand
solecism of two presents" renders writing difficult; in it he airs his
fondness for a pun and enlarges upon the fugacity of that form of fun,
its inherent incapacity for travel; and in it, too, he gives some
indication--we have several such indications in his letters--of his
fondness for hoaxing his friends with invented news about other
friends, or with questions on supposititious problems set forth as
actualities.

The next essay, "The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers," might be cited as
one of those most fully representing the characteristics of Lamb's
work as essayist. It has its touches of personal reminiscences, it
deals with an out-of-the-way subject in a surprisingly engaging
manner, and it is full of those quaint turns of expression, those more
or less recondite words which Elia re-introduced from the older
writers, Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, etc., as he had
re-introduced the dramatic writings of the seventeenth century. Here
is a passage which may be said to be thoroughly representative at once
of Elia's manner of looking at things, as well as his own manner of
describing them. Elia is discussing "Saloop."

I know not by what particular conformation of the organ it
happens, but I have always found that this composition is
surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young
chimney-sweeper--whether the oily particles (sassafras is
slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous
concretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to
adhere to the roof