presenting two--the essays appeared with such
regularity that twenty-eight months later there were twenty-seven of
the twenty-eight essays which were gathered into the volume published
in 1823 as "The Essays of Elia."

The publication of the essays in volume form did not by any means
indicate that the author had worked out his vein; indeed, while the
book was passing through the press he was writing other essays for the
"London," though not with the same regularity; afterwards he
contributed to the "New Monthly" and other magazines. Such of this
later work as he chose to preserve formed "The Last Essays of Elia,"
published ten years after the earlier work.

LETTERS

All through his working life as man of letters Lamb was engaged in
manifesting that side of his genius which whilst known to but few
persons during his lifetime was to be one of those most widely and
most lovingly known afterwards. He was of the greatest of our
letter-writers. It was perhaps but another aspect of the essayist--or
rather we might say that his work as essayist was the crowning
development of his sedulous habit of being himself when communing on
paper with his intimate friends. It has been suggested that such
finished works as are many of Lamb's letters were, so to speak, built
up bit by bit, and then copied as completed wholes before being
despatched to those for whom they were designed. Whether written with
a running pen, as a large proportion of them undoubtedly were, or
written with the patience of the essayist ponderingly in search of the
_mot juste_, they are always true Lamb, individual expressions far
removed from the ordinary letters of ordinary folk; they are at once
informing revelations of the writer in his relations with his fellows,
and they are always marked by essentially literary qualities. In his
letters will be found not infrequently--both in idea and in
expression--the germs of his essays.

Lamb was first revealed to the reading public as a great letter-writer
in Talfourd's "Memorials of Charles Lamb" nearly seventy years ago.
Since that time each further publication of the letters has brought
fresh material to light which has but gone to strengthen Lamb's
position as one of the first two or three letter-writers whose
epistles have taken their places in English literature. If we must
"place" our great men, there are not wanting critics who would accord
Lamb a position at the very head of those in this particular bran