husiastic manner, on the old English
dramatists,--or queer, quaint, golden-hearted Dr. D---- mildly and
modestly, yet most pertinently, express himself about Old Burton and Old
Fuller,--or wise, thoughtful, ingenious Squire M---- ably, if not very
eloquently, hold forth on Shakspeare and Milton, I had (who but a dunce
or dunderhead would not have had?) a "greedy great desire" to look into
the works of

"Such famous men, such worthies of the
earth."

And after listening to the stout, brawny, two-fisted, whole-soled,
big-hearted, large-brained Parson A----, as he talked in his wise and
winsome manner about Charles Lamed and his writings, I could not refrain
from forthwith procuring and reading Elia's famous and immortal essays.
Since then I have been a constant reader of Elia, and a most zealous
admirer of Charles Lamb the author and Charles Lamb the man. Thackeray,
you remember, somewhere mentions a youthful admirer of Dickens, who,
when she is happy, reads "Nicholas Nickleby,"--when she is unhappy,
reads "Nicholas Nickleby,"--when she is in bed, reads "Nicholas
Nickleby,"--when she has nothing to do, reads "Nicholas Nickleby,"--and
when she has finished the book, reads "Nicholas Nickleby": and so do I
read and re-read the essays and letters of Charles Lamb; and the oftener
I read them, the better I like then, the higher I value them. Indeed, I
live upon the essays of Elia, as Hazlitt did upon "Tristram Shandy," as
a sort of food that simulates with my natural disposition.

And yet, despite all my love and admiration of Charles Lamb,--nay,
rather in consequence of it,--I must blame him of what Mr. Barron Field
was please to eulogize him for,--writing so little. Undoubtedly in most
authors suppression in writing would be a virtue. In Lamb it was a
fault. There are a score or two of subjects which he, "no less from
temerity than felicity of his pen," should have written upon,--subjects
on which he had thought and ruminated for years, and which he, and none
but he, could do justice to. He who loved and admired before or since,
such sterling old writers as Burton, Browne, Fuller, and Walton, should
have given us an article on each of those worthies and their inditing.
Chaucer and Spenser, though proud and happy in having had such an
appreciating reader of there writings as Elia was, when denizen of this
earth, would, methinks, have given him a warmer, heartier, gladder
welcome to heaven, if he had done for them what h