n, which will come naturally to those of a later
generation, in observing whatever may have survived by chance of its
mere external habit. Seeing things always by the light of an
understanding more entire than is possible for ordinary minds, of the
whole mechanism of humanity, and seeing also the manner, the outward
mode or fashion, always in strict connexion with the spiritual
condition which determined it, a humourist such as Charles Lamb
anticipates the enchantment of distance; and the characteristics of
places, ranks, habits of life, are transfigured for him, even now and
in advance of time, by poetic light; justifying what some might condemn
as mere sentimentality, in the effort to hand on unbroken the tradition
of such fashion or accent. "The praise of beggars," "the cries of
London," the traits of actors just grown "old," the spots in "town"
where the country, its fresh green and fresh water, still lingered on,
one after another, amidst the bustle; the quaint, dimmed, just
played-out farces, he had relished so much, coming partly through them
to understand the earlier English theatre as a thing once really alive;
those fountains and sun-dials of old gardens, of which he entertains
such dainty discourse:--he feels the poetry of these things, as the
poetry of things old indeed, but surviving [116] as an actual part of
the life of the present; and as something quite different from the
poetry of things flatly gone from us and antique, which come back to
us, if at all, as entire strangers, like Scott's old Scotch-border
personages, their oaths and armour. Such gift of appreciation depends,
as I said, on the habitual apprehension of men's life as a whole--its
organic wholeness, as extending even to the least things in it--of its
outward manner in connexion with its inward temper; and it involves a
fine perception of the congruities, the musical accordance between
humanity and its environment of custom, society, personal intercourse;
as if all this, with its meetings, partings, ceremonies, gesture, tones
of speech, were some delicate instrument on which an expert performer
is playing.

These are some of the characteristics of Elia, one essentially an
essayist, and of the true family of Montaigne, "never judging," as he
says, "system-wise of things, but fastening on particulars;" saying all
things as it were on chance occasion only, and by way of pastime, yet
succeeding thus, "glimpse-wise," in catching and recording