where he mentions having just finished reading Chapman’s Homer, Lamb, seizing upon a phrase in that translation, says with gusto, “what endless egression of phrases the dog commands.”  The word arrided him (to employ another, the use of which he recovered for us), and he could not forbear making a note of it.  He had, indeed, something of an instinctive genius for finding words that had passed more or less into desuetude, and a happy way of re-introducing them to enrich the plainer prose of his day.  He did it naturally, even as though inevitably, and without any such air of coxcombical affectation as would have destroyed the flavour of the whole.  Lamb was so thoroughly imbued with the thought and modes of expression of the rich Elizabethan and Stuart periods that his use of obsolescent words was probably more often than not quite unconscious.

The egotism of Elia’s style in addressing his readers has been said to be founded on that of Sir Thomas Browne, and in a measure there can be little doubt that it was so—­but only in a measure, for it is something the same egotism as that of Montaigne, is, indeed, the natural attitude of the familiar essayist who must be egotistic, not from self-consciousness but from the lack of it.  In putting his opinions and experiences in the first person, we feel that Lamb did so almost unconsciously, because it was for him the easiest way of expressing himself.  It was not, in fact, egotism at all in the commonly accepted sense of meaning, too frequent or self-laudatory use of the personal pronoun.

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS

Those books with an asterisk against their date were only in part the work of Charles Lamb.

1796.  Poems on Various Subjects, by S. T. Coleridge (included four sonnets signed C. L., described in the preface as by “Mr. Charles Lamb of the India House").

1796.  Poems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer, by her grandson,
            Charles Lloyd (included “The Grandame,” by Lamb).

1797.  Poems by S. T. Coleridge, second edition, to which are now
            added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd.

1798.  Blank Verse by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb.

1798.  A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret (afterwards
            simply entitled “Rosamund Gray").

1802.  John Woodvil, a Tragedy; with Fragments of Burton.

1805.  The King and Queen of Hearts:  Showing how notably the Queen made
           her Tarts and how scurvily the Knave stole them away with other
           particulars belonging thereunto.

1807.  Tales from Shakespear, designed for the use of young Persons. 2
            vols. (By Charles and Mary Lamb, though only the name of the
            former appeared on the original title-page.)

1807 or 1808.  Mrs. Leicester’s School, or the History of several
                   young Ladies related by themselves (by Charles and
                   Mary Lamb).