the compass of a small volume, and perhaps half of that would be occupied with album verses, slight vers d’occasion, such as are more often the products of prose-writers’ leisure than of a poet who sings because he must.  He felt his way to prose through poetry as so many lesser writers have done, and on the way uttered perhaps a dozen pieces, which for one reason or another will ever make a lasting appeal to readers.  The sense of tragedy in “The Old Familiar Faces”—­more remarkable in that it was tragedy realized and expressed at the age of three-and-twenty—­the weird imagination of “The Gipsy’s Malison,” the sweet portraiture of “Hester,” the fancy of “A Farewell to Tobacco,” and the “Ode to the Treadmill,” will ensure that portion of his work to which they belong, sharing the immortality of the essays of Elia.

THE DRAMA

As an earnest student of dramatic literature Lamb early turned his attention to the theatre, and was moved with an ambition to write for the stage.  In his twenty-fourth year he started upon a piece to be entitled “Pride’s Cure,” and his letters about this time contain many references to its progress and give various extracts from it—­extracts which by themselves might suggest that the play would be a notable one, but the event turned out otherwise.  At the end of 1799 the piece was submitted under the title of “John Woodvil” to Kemble, and a year later it was rejected.  “John Woodvil” is poor indeed as a play; it has some capital scenes, it has some beautiful passages, but of dramatic story or characterization there is nothing.  The play is concerned with the fortunes of the Woodvils, a Devonshire family, at the time of the Restoration.  Sir Walter Woodvil is a Cromwellian, living in hiding with his younger son, Simon, while John holds high revel with boon companions.  Sir Walter’s ward, Margaret, who is beloved by John, finds that young man’s affection cooling, and thus leaves him and goes (disguised as a boy) to join her guardian in Sherwood Forest.  Then John, in a moment of intoxication, blabs to one of his companions of his proscribed father’s whereabouts, and follows it up by quarrelling with that companion, who forthwith sets off with another to arrest Sir Walter.  The old man believes that his son has betrayed him and promptly dies of a broken heart.  The play ends with the reconciliation of John and Margaret.  A ridiculously slight story for a five-act play.  Much in the writing of it shows the author’s loving study of seventeenth-century models, as may be seen from this speech of Simon’s on being asked what are the sports he and his father use in the forest: 

    Not many; some few, as thus:—­
    To see the sun to bed, and to arise,
    Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes,
    Bursting the lazy bands of sleep that bound him,
    With all his fires and travelling glories round him. 
    Sometimes the moon on soft