or earnest, though it be the life of his prose, is perdition to his poetry. A poet must either be manifestly in earnest, or manifestly in sport. Lamb is neither bard nor jester; or rather, the jingle of the cap and bells mingles with and mars the melody of the lyre. Yet there is much that is genuinely poetical in his verse, and more that is richly and uproariously comic.

His "Rosamund Gray," it has been fashionable of late years to praise, and, as it is very short, even fashionable to read. We have striven hard to see its beauty, but probably owing to the obtuseness of our optics, have striven in vain. We concede to it, however, the possession of simplicity, but it is the simplicity of nakedness, not precisely that of the story of Joseph and his brethren.

As a critic, Lamb's forte lay in seeing and showing new and unsuspected beauties in his author. He hangs and broods over the page, till all the secrets of its spirit are open to him. As Herschell seldom looked at the larger stars with that mighty telescope which swept the remoter firmaments, so Lamb's eye turns from the glare of the more prominent and dazzling qualities, to those far deep nooks and corners, in which the very marrow of meaning is or seems to be collected. Often, indeed, he attributes emphasis and intention to particular passages which never belonged to the author. And, as is natural to a discoverer, he sometimes exaggerates the value of what he has found. No man has ever seen Hogarth so clearly, or brought out so eloquently the moral and tragical qualities which lie like abysses beneath the thin, light, transparent ice of his humour.

Of the "Essays" of Elia, why need we say any thing? They are "nests of spicery," sweet, subtle extracts from that rarest of hearts, and most curiously-unique of intellects. Best in them, we like those reminiscences by which they are

furnished: of his own early days, of Christ-church school, of his young companions, with whom he paced the cloisters, of the clerks who sat with him in the old South-Sea House, of dear sister Bridget, and, above all, of Samuel Taylor Coleridge," logician, metaphysician, bard; while Hope still rose before him like a fiery column, the dark side not yet turned." Lamb is the last essayist of England, and fitly and beautifully closes the fine line which Steele and Addison began.

It was to be expected that, as the essayist merges naturally into the letter-writer, the letters of Lamb should be worthy of his fame. We wish we could say something of this elegant species of literature, the letter; of the beauty of the first idea of extracting the private passages of one's life, recording, rolling up, sealing down into compact unity, and sending off by trusty transmission, little fragments of one's soul; of circulating the tinier griefs and fainter joys and more evanescent emotions, as well as the larger incidents and deeper passions of existence; of adding wings to conversation, and, by the soft soundless touch of a paperwand, and the wave of a rod of feather, annihilating time and space, truly a "delicate thought, and softly bodied forth;" of the motley freightage which this little ark, once launched, has been compelled to bear: now called on to transmit a weight of written tears, and now of eager and expansive joys; now to "waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole," and now to echo a compliment or circulate a sneer; now to convey the gall of malice, and now to reflect the "bloom of young desire and purple light of love ;" now to popularize the cogitations of the philosopher, and now to creak and tremble under the awful burdens of the inspired Apostle of the principal writers of this fine species of composition,-of Gray, with his ease, purity of style, and picturesqueness of description, of the letters of Cowper, with their refined sim

plicity, and their depths of humour,-of Burns's, written on the top of deal tables, or chests of drawers, in wayside inns, and in the fire of potations pottle deep, coarse, consequently, wild, extravagant, but bold, forcible, sincere,-of the epistolary vein which at length opened in Byron, like the minor mouth of a volcano, and prompted those melancholy yet instructive missives of Venetian lewdness, infamy, and despair, over which the elite of London society met regularly to chuckle, in John Murray's back shop,-of Shelley's letters, so simple, stately, and eloquent,-of Sir Walter Scott's plain, downright, business-like style of letter,-of Conversation Sharp's nice little morsels,-of Miss Seward's pert prettiness, of Mrs. Grant's lively and most feminine epistles,and of the two finest letters ever written, both, strange to tell, proceeding from an artificial and scholastic man,--we refer to those addressed by Mackintosh to Hall, on his recovery from derangement,-solemn as offerings on a shrine, tinged with reverence toward the great spirit which had just come down from the "thunder hill" of Frenzy, touching with a bold, yet tender finger, the delicate and dangerous topic-breathing the purest spirit of attachment, and written with an elegance, a purity, and a pathos superior to aught in his more elaborate productions-they form among the sublimest memorials which genius has ever consecrated to friendship. What a cheering welcome did they furnish to the smitten and bewildered being, as he came back from that wild land to the experiences of the cold common world, and found his oldest and most congenial friend waiting on the border with a pressure of hand so soft and thrilling, and a smile of welcome so gravely sweet and reverently solemn, as must have melted his strong man to tears.

Lamb's letters are full of himself, and of his usual, incessant, and delightful mannerism. They abound in heart,

peculiarity, unworldly pathos, humour, irony, fun, nonsense, balderdash, madness, yet all so deliciously fresh and rich, so peppered with old world condiments, so brimful of the sparkling" wine of life," so tartly singular in their spirit and style, that you sigh to think that they are included in that every thing which has an end.

Elia! we must reluctantly bid thee adieu! We have not done justice to thy inimitable merits; but assuredly it is from no defect of love! We feel almost as if we had known thee personally, sat at thy bounteous board, seen thy dark noble countenance, the "painful sweetness" of thy smile, thy small, slight, quivering form, seen by thy side, Mary, thy more than sister, linked to thee in "dual loneliness," thy tender nurse, thy mild companion, sometimes, alas! in her turn, the object of thy deep solicitude and awful care, as if we had seen around the table "many glittering faces looking on," the faces of immortals-the serene front of Wordsworth, the mild mystic gaze of Coleridge, Hazlitt's pallid face and eager eye, Southey's Roman carriage, Hunt's thoughtful yet joyous visage,-as if we had heard the colloquies which hung wings of gold upon each dark hour, as it chased the other away. For the dead we may not and need not pray; but surely, as we wave farewell, we may say, Blessings on thy kind heart, oblivion to thy errors, immortality to thy name.

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM

AND THE RURAL POETS.

"GOD made the country, and man made the town," says Cowper, in his brief, blunt, decisive way. It is a daring

common-place. It is a line which no man would have ventured to utter if he had lived all his days in cities, if he had not, like Peter Bell, set his face against the open sky" on mountains and on lonely moors." It contains in it a profound truth; for, as long as the architecture of the heavens surpasses the masonry of men, and the dome of the sky is nobler than that of St. Paul's, and the smoke of the solitary cottage, ascending with its waving tongue as from the altar of the morning sacrifice, is more spiritual than the huge black column vomited from the mill, and leaves glancing in the sunbeams are more beautiful than red bricks, and torrents flashing in the red light of the receding storm are more glorious to behold than the putrid puddles and mud-cataracts of the streets, and avenues of oaks, of "old prodigious growth," better than dirty and vicious lanes, and mighty glens mantled with sunshine or with shade, and the solemn streets of forests, and the deep hollows of the everlasting hills, and the wild paths cut by cataracts for their own irresistible way, and rocks, the gigantic gateways of the thunder, are finer than squares however splendid, and streets however broad, and spires however lofty,—as long as the span of the rainbow surpasses the arch of the bridge, and the harmonies of nature are more musical than the roar of sin arising from the twilight town, and the colour of health on the cheek of the peasant more pleasing than the cadaverous hue of disease, whitening the cheek of the artisan, and man leaning over the fresh reeking earth is a more natural object than man bending above the forge and the furnace, shall we, with Cowper, continue to prefer the country to the town, and for the same reason-the one is the production of the gross breath of miserable man, the other, each new morning, is the new emanation of eternal love and wisdom.

"God made the country, and man made the town."