ed
from any parent. They are foul Anomalies, of whom we know
not whence they are sprung, nor whether they have beginning
or ending. As they are without human passions, so they seem
to be without human relations. They come with thunder and
lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of
them.--Except Hecate, they have no names; which heightens
their mysteriousness. Their names, and some of the
properties, which Middleton has given to his Hags, excite
smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence
cannot co-exist with mirth. But in a lesser degree the
witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power too is,
in some measure, over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies,
strife, _like a thick scurf o'er life_.

Here surely we have the right stuff. Terse, pregnant sentences; few
words, but going to the very heart of the matter. That Lamb was justly
proud of his pioneer work in this field of literary research is
certain, for in a short autobiography which he prepared for a friend's
album--in what has been called "the briefest, and perhaps the wittiest
and most truthful autobiography in the language"--he wrote as follows:

He also was the first to draw the Public attention to the
old English Dramatists, in a work called "Specimens of
English Dramatic Writers who lived about the Time of
Shakspeare," published about fifteen years since.

Of Lamb's work in this field the elder Disraeli admirably said, "He
carries us on through whole scenes by a true, unerring motion. His was
a poetical mind, labouring in poetry." Within the century that has
elapsed since Lamb was engaged in exploring the forgotten old tomes in
which lay buried so much excellent literature, the study which he
started has taken its place as one of the most important of its kind,
and a large library might be formed of the books and reprints which
may be looked upon as direct descendants of that modest single octavo
volume of 1808. During his later years Lamb devised something in the
nature of a supplement when he prepared further extracts from the
Garrick collection of plays in the British Museum for Hone's "Table
Book" (1827), and these extracts are now generally bound up with the
earlier ones in a single work.

ESSAYS

In giving this summary account of Lamb's writings it has been thought
best only to keep to a very roughly chronological method,