Among the prose writers of this age, the fiction of Scott and Jane Austen seems destined to the longest lease of life and the widest circle of readers.  De Quincey’s work, especially his artistic presentation of his thrilling dreams, has many admirers.

[Illustration:  CHARLES LAMB. From a drawing by Maclise.]

The Essays of Elia of Charles Lamb (1775-1834) still charms many readers.  For over thirty years he was by day a clerk in the India House and by night a student of the Elizabethan drama and a writer of periodical essays, suggestive of the work of Addison and Steele.  Lamb’s pervasive humor in discussing trivial subjects makes him very delightful reading.  His well-known Essays of Elia first appeared in the London Magazine between 1820 and 1833.  The peculiar flavor of his style and humor is shown in his A Dissertation upon Roast-Pig, as one of the most popular of these Essays is called.  Lamb relates how a Chinese boy, Bo-bo, having accidentally set his house an fire and roasted a litter of pigs, happened to acquire a liking for roast pig when he sucked his fingers to cool them after touching a crackling pig.  It was considered a crime to eat meat that was not raw; but the jury fortunately had their fingers burned in the same way and tried Bo-bo’s method of cooling them.  The boy was promptly acquitted.  Lamb gravely proceeds:—­

“The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision, and when the court was dismissed, went privily and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money.  In a few days his lordship’s town house was observed to be on fire.  The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction.  Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district.  The insurance offices one and all shut up shop.  People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world.  Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it.  Then began the rude form of a gridiron.”

[Illustration:  BO-BO AND ROAST PIG. From a drawing by B. Westmacott.]

Other enjoyable essays are Old China, a lovable picture of his home life with his sister, Dream Children, New Year’s Eve, and Poor Relations.

The results of Lamb’s Elizabethan studies appeared in the excellent Tales from Shakespeare, which he wrote with his sister, and in his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who wrote about the Time of Shakespeare.