poverty and by the anxieties arising from the condition of the latter, and they moved about from one lodging to another.  L.’s literary ventures so far had not yielded much either in money or fame, but in 1807 he was asked by W. Godwin (q.v.) to assist him in his “Juvenile Library,” and to this he, with the assistance of his sister, contributed the now famous Tales from Shakespeare, Charles doing the tragedies and Mary the comedies.  In 1808 they wrote, again for children, The Adventures of Ulysses, a version of the Odyssey, Mrs. Leicester’s School, and Poetry for Children (1809).  About the same time he was commissioned by Longman to ed. selections from the Elizabethan dramatists.  To the selections were added criticisms, which at once brought him the reputation of being one of the most subtle and penetrating critics who had ever touched the subject.  Three years later his extraordinary power in this department was farther exhibited in a series of papers on Hogarth and Shakespeare, which appeared in Hunt’s Reflector.  In 1818 his scattered contributions in prose and verse were coll. as The Works of Charles Lamb, and the favour with which they were received led to his being asked to contribute to the London Magazine the essays on which his fame chiefly rests.  The name “Elia” under which they were written was that of a fellow-clerk in the India House.  They appeared from 1820-25.  The first series was printed in 1823, the second, The Last Essays of Elia, in 1833.  In 1823 the L.’s had left London and taken a cottage at Islington, and had practically adopted Emma Isola, a young orphan, whose presence brightened their lives until her marriage in 1833 to E. Moxon, the publisher.  In 1825 L. retired, and lived at Enfield and Edmonton.  But his health was impaired, and his sister’s attacks of mental alienation were ever becoming more frequent and of longer duration.  During one of his walks he fell, slightly hurting his face.  The wound developed into erysipelas, and he d. on December 29, 1834.  His sister survived until 1847.

The place of L. as an essayist and critic is the very highest.  His only rival in the former department is Addison, but in depth and tenderness of feeling, and richness of fancy L. is the superior.  In the realms of criticism there can be no comparison between the two.  L. is here at once profound and subtle, and his work led as much as any other influence to the revival of interest in and appreciation of our older poetry.  His own writings, which are self-revealing in a quite unusual and always charming way, and the recollections of his friends, have made the personality of Lamb more familiar to us than any other in our literature, except that of Johnson.  His weaknesses, his oddities, his charm, his humour, his stutter, are all as familiar to his readers as if they had known him, and the tragedy and noble self-sacrifice of his life add a feeling of reverence for a character we already love.