gs, was it?--a great affair we
thought it then--which you had lavished on the old folio.
Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I
do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old
purchases now.

When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a
less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo,
which we christened the "Lady Blanch"; when you looked at
the purchase, and thought of the money,--and thought of the
money, and looked again at the picture--was there no
pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do
but walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos.
Yet do you?

"Confessions of a Drunkard" and "Popular Fallacies" complete the tale
of the "Essays of Elia" that were collected into volume form as such.
The first-named essay had been issued originally in 1813. It is an
attempt to set forth from a drunkard's point of view the evils of
drunkenness, and was first published in a periodical with a purpose
over twenty years before its inclusion in the second edition of the
"Last Essays of Elia." To accentuate the fact that it was purely a
literary performance--an attempt to project himself into the mind of a
drunkard willing to allow others to profit by his example--Lamb
reprinted it in the "London Magazine" as one of his ordinary
contributions. There have not been wanting matter-of-fact people (with
whom our Elia has recorded his imperfect sympathy) who have accepted
this essay as pure biography; because details tally with the author's
life they think the whole must do so. We have but to follow the story
of Lamb's life with understanding to realize how wrong is this
impression. The closing dozen of essays in brief, grouped under the
title of "Popular Fallacies," discuss certain familiar axioms and show
them--in the light of fun and fancy--to be wholly fallacious.

Such is the variety of those two volumes which by common consent--by
popular appreciation and by critical judgement--have their place as
Lamb's most characteristic work. Throughout both series we find
delicate unconventionality, the same choice of subjects from among the
simplest suggestions of everyday life, lifted by his method of
treatment, his manner of looking at and treating things, out of the
sphere of every day into that of all days. However simple may be the
subject chosen it is always made peculiarly his own.

HIS STYLE