The intimate footing upon which he puts himself and his reader, is perhaps not so much a peculiarity of his own as it is the dominant note always in the work of your born essayist.  He discourses high truth or fresh philosophy, truest poetry, richest wit, or the most delicate humour, he presents personal experiences with that simplicity of pure camaraderie which assumes that the reader could do the same—­if he had the mind, as Lamb himself put it when wittily snubbing Wordsworth.  In most books, as De Quincey has pointed out, the author figures as a mere abstraction, “without sex or age or local station,” whom the reader banishes from his thoughts, but in the case of Lamb and that brilliant line of authors to which he belongs, we must know something of the man himself, and as I have said earlier, we get it abundantly scattered up and down his writings.  Even if we do not happen to be acquainted with the actual biography, we can build up in our minds on reading the essays of Elia a life story not far removed from actuality, though it would be wanting in any hint of tragedy.  It is this intimacy which at once attracts and repels readers, attracts all those who are, in however small a degree, kindred spirits, and repels, perhaps, others.  The quaintness, oddity, flippancy, are wrought together with deep thought, poetry, and feeling to a wonderful degree.  The very diversity of theme and manner—­this varying change from grave to gay, from lively to severe—­is indeed but a reflection of life itself, which with the most fortunate of us dashes our smiles with tears, and even to the most unfortunate imparts something of pleasure and delight.

The “Essays of Elia” may fittingly be dealt with as at once the most representative and the finest of his writings.  Great as is the range of their subjects, it will be found that they are more or less unified by the author’s individuality both in point of view and in treatment, that they are all informed with what has been termed Lamb’s calm and self-reposing spirit, that they are all more or less strongly marked by that style which, based upon a loving study of the Elizabethan and seventeenth-century writers, was yet for the most part distinguished by concision and ease.  He took from his models their richness of language without their prolixity, their felicity of expression without their tendency to the elaboration of conceits; he unconsciously employed their varied styles, to form an individual style of his own.

It is only possible in one small section of a small volume such as this to indicate a portion of the wealth in the Elia series, so varied are the themes which inspired the essayist:  the delicious drollery of the “Dissertation upon Roast Pig”; the immortal characterization of “Mrs. Battle’s Opinions upon Whist”; the pleasant personal touches in a score of the essays; the cry of stifled affection in “Dream Children”; the whimsicality of “Popular Fallacies”; each of these, and as many again unspecified might be made the subject