The Project Gutenberg eBook, Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May,
1863, by Various

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Title: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863

Author: Various

Release Date: July 26, 2004 [eBook #13026]

Language: English

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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATLANTIC MONTHLY, VOLUME 11, ISSUE
67, MAY, 1863***

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THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XI.--MAY, 1863.--NO. LXVII.

CHARLES LAMB'S UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS.

I.

What Southey says of Cottle's shop is true of the little bookstore in a
certain old town of New England, which I used to frequent years ago, and
where I got my first peep into Chaucer, and Spenser, and Fuller, and Sir
Thomas Browne, and other renowned old authors, from whom I now derive so
much pleasure and solacement. 'Twas a place where sundry lovers of good
books used to meet and descant eloquently and enthusiastically upon the
merits and demerits of their favorite authors. I, then a young man, with
a most praiseworthy desire of reading "books that are books," but with
a most lamentable ignorance of even the names of the principal
English authors, was both a pleased and a benefited listener to the
conversations of these bookish men. Hawthorne says that to hear the
old Inspector (whom he has immortalized in the quaint and genial
introduction to the "Scarlet Letter") expatiate on fish, poultry, and
butcher's-meat, and the most eligible methods of preparing the same for
the table, was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster; and to hear these
literary gourmands talk with such gusto of this writer's delightful
style, or of that one's delicious humor, or t' other's brilliant wit
and merciless satire, gave one a taste and a relish for the authors so
lovingly and heartily commended. Certainly, after hearing the genial,
scholarly, gentlemanly lawyer S---- sweetly discourse on the old English
divines,--or bluff, burly, good-natured, wit-loving Master R----
declaim, in his loud, bold, ent