might not inaptly be termed "The Masters of Mean
Morals." The astonishing narrowness and illiberality of the lessons
contained in some of those books is inconceivable by those whose studies
have not led them that way, and would almost induce one to subscribe to
the hard censure which Drayton has passed upon the mercantile spirit,--

"The gripple merchant, born to be the curse
Of this brave isle."

In the laudable endeavor to eke out "a something contracted income,"
Lamb, in his younger days, essayed to write lottery-puffs,--(Byron, we
know, was accused of writing lottery-puffs,)--but he did not succeed
very well in the task. His samples were returned on his hands, as "done
in too severe and terse a style." Some Grub-Street hack--a
nineteenth-century Tom Brown or Mr. Dash--succeeded in composing these
popular and ingenious productions; but the man who wrote the Essays of
Elia could not write a successful lottery-puff. At this exult, O
mediocrity! and take courage, man of genius!

Although Elia was an unsuccessful lottery-puffer, he always took special
interest in lotteries, and was present at the drawing of many of them.

Mr. Bickerstaff, we remember,--though I fear that in these days the
pleasant and profitable pages of "The Father" are hardly more known to
the generality of readers than the lost books of Livy or the missing
cantos of the "Faerie Queene,"--possibly we may remember, I say, that
the wise, witty, learned, eloquent, delightful Mr. Bickerstaff, in order
to raise the requisite sum to purchase a ticket in the (then) newly
erected lottery, sold off a couple of globes and a telescope (the
venerable Isaac was a Professor of Palmistry and Astrology, as well as
Censor of Great Britain); and finding by a learned calculation that it
was but a hundred and fifty thousand to one against his being worth one
thousand pounds for thirty-two years, he spent many days and nights in
preparing his mind for this change of fortune.

And albeit I do not believe that Lamb, in his poorest and most needy
days, was ever tempted by any Alnaschar-dreams of wealth to exchange the
raggedest and least valuable of his "midnight darlings" for the
wherewithal to purchase lottery-tickets, I dare say the money which Elia
had saved for the purchase of some choice and long-coveted old folio or
other went into the coffers of the lottery-dealers. Though Lamb drew
nothing but blanks, "or those more vexatious tantalizers of the spirit,