ng us to
tears. You may know his essays by heart, but you can't define their
elusive charm.

Lamb had one of the saddest of lives, yet he remained sweet and
wholesome through trials that would have embittered a nature less fine
and noble. He came of poor people and he and his sister Mary inherited
from their mother a strain of mental unsoundness. Lamb spent seven
years in Christ's Hospital as a "Blue Coat" boy, and the chief result,
aside from the foundations of a good classical scholarship, was a
friendship for Coleridge which endured through life. From this school
he was forced to go into a clerkship in the South Sea house, but after
three years he secured a desk in the East India house, where he
remained for thirty years.

Four years later his first great sorrow fell upon Lamb. His sister
Mary suddenly developed insanity, attacked a maid servant, and when
the mother interfered the insane girl fatally wounded her with a
knife. In this crisis Lamb showed the fineness of his nature. Instead
of permitting poor Mary to be consigned to a public insane asylum, he
gave bonds that he would care for her, and he did care for her during
the remainder of her life. Although in love with a girl, he resolutely
put aside all thoughts of marriage and domestic happiness and devoted
himself to his unfortunate sister, who in her lucid periods repaid his
devotion with the tenderest affection.

Lamb's letters to Coleridge in those trying days are among the most
pathetic in the language. To Coleridge he turned for stimulus in his
reading and study, and he never failed to get help and comfort from
this great, ill-balanced man of genius. Later he began a
correspondence with Southey, in which he betrayed much humor and great
fancy. In his leisure he saturated his mind with the Elizabethan poets
and dramatists; practically he lived in the sixteenth century, for his
only real life was a student's dream life. He contributed to the
London newspapers, but his first published work to score any success
was his _Tales From Shakespeare_, in which his sister aided him. Then
followed _Poets Contemporary With Shakespeare_, selections with
critical comment, which at once gave Lamb rank among the best critics
of his time. He wrote, when the mood seized him, recollections of his
youth, essays and criticisms which he afterward issued in two volumes.

Twenty-five essays that he contributed to the LONDON MAGAZINE over the
signature of Elia were reprinted i