olutionary
generations; these traits in combination communicate to the papers a
grace and strength of originality which nothing in any literature
approaches, whether for degree or kind of excellence, except the most
felicitous papers of Addison, such as those on Sir Roger de Coverley,
and some others in the same vein of composition. They resemble
Addison's papers also in the diction, which is natural and idiomatic
even to carelessness. They are equally faithful to the truth of
nature; and in this only they differ remarkably--that the sketches of
Elia reflect the stamp and impress of the writer's own character,
whereas in all those of Addison the personal peculiarities of the
delineator (tho known to the reader from the beginning through the
account of the club) are nearly quiescent. Now and then they are
recalled into a momentary notice, but they do not act, or at all
modify his pictures of Sir Roger or Will Wimble. They are amiably
eccentric; but the Spectator in describing them, takes the station of
an ordinary observer.

Everywhere, indeed, in the writings of Lamb, and not merely in his
"Elia," the character of the writer cooperates in an undercurrent to
make the effect of the thing written. To understand in the fullest
sense either the gaiety or the tenderness of a particular passage, you
must have some insight into the peculiar bias of the writer's mind,
whether native and original, or imprest gradually by the accidents of
situation; whether simply developed out of predispositions by the
action of life, or violently scorched into the constitution by some
fierce fever of calamity. There is in modern literature a whole class
of writers, tho not a large one, standing within the same category;
some marked originality of character in the writer becomes a
coefficient with what he says to a common result; you must sympathize
with this personality in the author before you can appreciate the most
significant parts of his views. In most books the writer figures as a
mere abstraction, without sex or age or local station, whom the reader
banishes from his thoughts. What is written seems to proceed from a
blank intellect, not from a man clothed with fleshly peculiarities and
differences. These peculiarities and differences neither do, nor
(generally speaking) could intermingle with the texture of the
thoughts so as to modify their force or their direction. In such
books--and they form the vast majority--there is nothing to be