ve to
the seeker after autobiographical data as it is engaging to the reader
in search of nothing further than the rich delight which comes of
passing time with a literary gem. Lamb pictures "The South Sea House"
as it was when he knew it thirty years earlier--he speaks of it as
forty years. There is a presentation of the old place, fallen more or
less completely upon days of desuetude, with some wonderfully-limned
portraits of the officials. Here is the deputy-cashier, Thomas Tame:

He had the air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have taken
him for one, had you met him in one of the passages leading
to Westminster Hall. By stoop, I mean that gentle bending of
the body forwards, which, in great men, must be supposed to
be the effect of an habitual condescending attention to the
applications of their inferiors. While he held you in
converse, you felt strained to the height in the colloquy.
The conference over, you were at leisure to smile at the
comparative insignificance of the pretensions which had just
awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest order. It did
not reach to a saw or a proverb. His mind was in its
original state of white paper. A sucking babe might have
posed him. What was it then? Was he rich! Alas, no! Thomas
Tame was very poor. Both he and his wife looked outwardly
gentle folks, when I fear all was not well at all times
within. She had a neat meagre person, which it was evident
she had not sinned in over-pampering; but in its veins was
noble blood. She traced her descent, by some labyrinth of
relationship, which I never thoroughly understood--much less
can explain with any heraldic certainty at this time of
day--to the illustrious but unfortunate house of
Derwentwater. This was the secret of Thomas's stoop. This
was the thought, the sentiment, the bright solitary star of
your lives, ye mild and happy pair, which cheered you in the
night of intellect, and in the obscurity of your station!
This was to you instead of riches, instead of rank, instead
of glittering attainments, and it was worth them all
together. You insulted none with it; but, while you wore it
as a piece of defensive armour only, no insult likewise
could reach you through it. _Decus et solamen._

Then at the close Elia says, "Reader, what if I have been playing with
thee all this wh