The next essay, “The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers,” might be cited as one of those most fully representing the characteristics of Lamb’s work as essayist.  It has its touches of personal reminiscences, it deals with an out-of-the-way subject in a surprisingly engaging manner, and it is full of those quaint turns of expression, those more or less recondite words which Elia re-introduced from the older writers, Jeremy Taylor, Sir Thomas Browne, etc., as he had re-introduced the dramatic writings of the seventeenth century.  Here is a passage which may be said to be thoroughly representative at once of Elia’s manner of looking at things, as well as his own manner of describing them.  Elia is discussing “Saloop.”

I know not by what particular conformation of the organ it happens, but I have always found that this composition is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a young chimney-sweeper—­whether the oily particles (sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and soften the fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the mouth in these unfledged practitioners; or whether Nature, sensible that she had mingled too much of bitter wood in the lot of these raw victims, caused to grow out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive; but so it is, that no possible taste or odour to the senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a delicate excitement comparable to this mixture.  Being penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over the ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals—­cats—­when they purr over a new-found sprig of valerian.  There is something more in these sympathies than philosophy can inculcate.

In this essay also we have an example—­one of how many!—­of Lamb’s happiness in hitting upon an illustration, even though it be of the ludicrous; mentioning the wonderful white of the sweep-boy’s teeth he adds, “It is, as when

                     ’A sable cloud
    Turns forth her silver lining on the night.’”

“A Dissertation upon Roast Pig” is perhaps the most widely known of all the essays of Elia.  Its delightful drollery, its very revelling in the daintiness of sucking-pig, its wonderfully rich literary presentation, its deliberate acceptance of wild improbability as historic basis, all unite to give it special place in the regard of readers.  The theme is of course familiar.  It is that of a small Chinese boy playing with fire who burnt down his father’s flimsy hut so that a whole litter of piglings was roasted in the conflagration.  The boy touched one of the incinerated little ones to feel if it were alive; burnt his fingers and applied them to his mouth.  His father returned and did the same, and thus roast sucking-pig became a new dish.  Lamb plays with his subject with an inimitable mock earnestness.