in the course of the next few pages-not improbably, I think, with some further personal references occasionally in his mind; as for instance where Wither alleges his unaltered cordiality of friendship for all who ever once had his affection, and in the same breath asserts his indifference as to whether they believe this or not until occasion be given him to show his love to some purpose.

Nor have I ever said I loved yet,

Where I expected more than love for it.

Opposite a passage in which he professes that under no circumstances would he wish to be another man than himself, Lamb cites for comparison a fine passage from Jeremy Taylor, which expresses and explains the same sentiment. A more singular parallel is discovered between a passage in which Wither declares his freedom from all physical antipathies to animals or national prejudices against foreigners and one in which Sir Thomas Browne makes the same profession for himself. To the extract given from the Religio Medici Lamb subjoins this note.

'It is not assuming too much to suppose that Sir T. B. might have been reading Wither just before he wrote this.'

A quaint passage in the text has provoked a quaint altercation in the notes, when the poet declares of himself

I have not so much beauty, to attract

The eyes

of ladies; neither have I lackt Of that proportion which doth well suffice

To make me gracious in good people's eyes.

Whereon Lamb remarks: His portrait now re-engraved shews him to have been in person of no mean attraction.' Dr. Nott would prefer to say, 'not deficient in personal comeliness.' 'Stupid alteration,' remarks the original annotator-not without reason. Soon after, on a phrase used by Wither in asserting his physical health and purity, Nott remarks how very fond he is of this phrase': and Lamb replies:— Not so fond as you to catch him tripping. He speaks passionately, you deride coldly. You sin, he never.' Self-complacency may be something less weighty than a sin, but even Lamb seems to feel that his favourite client had somewhat more of the quality than would usually be thought graceful, when he thus comments on Wither's estimate of his own pretentions as a suitor for the hand of any supposed mistress':

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"The whole of these two or three pages is in the spirit of Othellowho seems to have been as chary of throwing himself away as this Gentleman.

"But that I love the gentle Desdemona,

I would not my unhoused free condition
Put into circumscription and confine
For the sea's worth."

But Wither is longer in saying it.'

I do not think this worth 'quoting,' decides the judicial Nott. To him Lamb:-'Don't you? Who the devil are you? What are you, and what are you NOT? C.L.'

On that part of the poem which deals with the second clause of the motto Lamb has made no remark: but when Wither comes to the third head of his discourse (on the text 'Nec Curo') we also come upon a well-known passage of the commentary, which I transcribe as it stands in the manuscript.

This clause of Wither's Motto is certainly the happiest ever chosen. The whole secret of Wither's happiness seems to have consisted in the act of an innocent self-pleasing. His poems are so many professions of a generous Egotism-Whatever he does, it is to please himself; if he writes it is to please himself; he would have you think he never casts a care upon his readers-This way of talking requires a known warmth of heart in the person who uses it to make it palatable. Wither's kind heart gives a vital heat to all his professions of self-seeking.' ("Very obscure,' interposes the irrepressible Nott; to you, to others Not,' very justly retorts the writer.) By self he means a great deal, his friends, his principles, his country: sometimes he means all these by himself. C. L.' Under this admirable note Dr. Nott has had the pedantic impertinence to scribble the pencilled remark-This should be re-written, with more simplicity': to which Lamb responds, it should NOT, Nott!' the last word in pencil, but the subscription 'C. L.' in ink.

There are no further notes on this poem: but two truly noble passages are marked with a double cross and vehement pencil-strokes of admiration: the first, on the vanity of astrology, bears so vivid a resemblance to the famous verses of Fletcher On an Honest Man's Fortune' that we cannot but imagine some half unrecognised echo of their simple and stately cadence to have been playing in the author's ear as he conceived the following lines.

I'll seek within me, and if there I find

Those stars which should give light unto my mind
Rise fair and timely in me, and affect
Each other with a natural aspect;
If in conjunction there perceive I may
True virtue and religion every day,
And walk according to that influence
Which is derived unto me from thence,
I fear no fortunes, whatsoe'er they be,
Nor care I what my stars do threaten me.

or he who to that state can once attain
Above the power of all the stars doth reign.

The corresponding passage in the text of the published essay gives the reading 'act'; and so it seems to stand in the manuscript, though it might easily be read as 'art.'

These seven words have been struck through and the following eleven substituted in a different hand-- all of which he sometimes includes in the description of himself.

There is a fine burst of mingled superstition and self-devotion on the next page, where, under the impression of a fancy that America may be the wilderness to which the "woman 6 "and her "son" must fly to 'scape the "dragon's" fury' (as prognosticated in the lucid and significant pages of the Apocalypse), till God has been graciously pleased to reduce Europe into a state of barbarism' and bring in 'other people' to be his church, the poet exclaims,

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Why should his pleasure be my care or grief?

O let his Name and Church more glorious grow,
Although my ruin help to make it so!

So I my duty in my place have done,

I care not greatly what succeeds thereon;

For sure I am, if I can pleasèd be

With what God wills, all shall be well for me.

This passage is not honoured by any notice from Lamb: the last in this poem which he has marked is that in which the author vows 'by the eternal Deity,'

Of whose great spirit these the sparklings are,

So may I still retain that inward peace,

That love and taste of the eternal bliss,

Those matchless comforts, and those brave desires,
Those sweet contentments and immortal fires,
Which at this instant do inflame my breast,

And are too excellent to be exprest:

I do not care a rush, though I were born

Unto the greatest poverty and scorn

That, since God first infus'd it with his breath,

Poor flesh and blood did ever groan beneath;

verses not unworthy to kindle so noble an enthusiasm of sympathy in so noble a spirit as Charles Lamb's. As much may be said for these among not a few others :

O that my lines were able to express

The cause and ground of this my carelessness;

That I might show you what brave things they be,
Which at this instant are a fire in me!

At the close of Wither's high-toned and pathetic address or epigram (so-called) to his father, Nott delivers himself of this remark:'His quatrain stanzas are much smoother than his couplets.' To which Lamb appends this final note.

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'Is that all you have to say on this divine Epigram and the following? O Eloquent in abuse! Niggard where thou shouldst Praise! Most negative Nott!'

With which three parting kicks the thrice unhappy doctor is dismissed for ever and a day to the limbo of pedants.

To his Mother-with reference to the calumnious reports mentioned in the fifth satire of the first book.

'Jamque opus exegi,' which I would not have undertaken for love of any other man than Lamb: so much heavier to some hands than to others is the labour of transcription and collation. To those who feel nothing of the attraction which his lovers find in the lightest word, the slightest record, the smallest relic of Charles Lamb, the time and care spent on these fugitive notes will seem deplorably and strangely wasted. As many talk of Robin Hood who never shot in his bow, so do many talk of Charles Lamb who have never entered in spirit into the homely and happy sanctuary of his more private or inward presence. But for all who love him the charm of that companionship is alike indefinable and incomparable. It pervades his work as with an odour of sweet old-world flowers or spices long laid by among fine linens and rare brocades in some such old oaken or cedarn cabinet as his grandmother might have opened to rejoice the wondering senses of her boyish visitor at Blakesmoor.' His own words may best express the special feeling of tenderness and delight, familiar reverence and satisfied affection, which the very sound or thought of his gentle name' wakes up always anew within us into warmth and freshness of life. The names of some of our poets,' avows Elia in one of his last essays, with a graceful touch of apology for the fanciful confession, 'sound sweeter, and have a finer relish to the ear to mine, at least-than that of Milton or of Shakespeare. It may be, that the latter are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the mention, are, Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Cowley.' And even so do we now find a homely magic in the name of Lamb, a special fragrance in the fame of it, such as hardly seems to hang about the statelier sound of Coleridge's or Wordsworth's or Shelley's. No good criticism of Lamb, strictly speaking, can ever be written; because nobody can do justice to his work who does not love it too well to feel himself capable of giving judgment on it. And if such a reader as this should undertake to enter the lists against any of Lamb's detractors, or to engage in debate with any of his half-hearted and semi-supercilious partisans, he would doubtless find himself driven or tempted to break all bounds of critical reason in his panegyric of a genius so beloved. Question or denial of Lamb's dramatic powers might goad him on to maintain that John Woodvil is the only tragedy in the language which may properly be set beside Hamlet,and The Wife's Trial the one comedy which may hold its own if compared with Much Ado about Nothing. Let me not be suspected of any desire to maintain this thesis if I avow my enjoyment. and admiration of Lamb's tragedy, his comedy, and his farce. Of his essays and letters, humorous or pathetic, prosaic or fantastic, erratic or composed, what is there to be said but that it would be a feat far easier to surpass all others than to approach the best of these? But the truth is simple and indisputable that no labour could be at once so

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delightful and so useless, so attractive and so vain, as the task of writing in praise of Lamh. Any man or any child who can feel anything of his charm utters better praise of him in silence than any array of epithets or periods could give. Any man or any woman who can feel nothing of his charm is outside the pale of any possible influence or impression from any reasoning or any enthusiasm of others. Genius and goodness, self-sacrifice and love, sweet and stingless humour, joyful kindness and patient endurance, could not but make of Charles and Mary Lamb two figures most obnoxious and contemptible to that very sorry pair of phenomena, Thomas Cloacinus and his Goody. This was a sham strong man,' said Carlyle-very justly-of Byron and equal justice echoes back the verdict as retorted on Carlyle. The true strong man whose whole life was an act of love, an offering of faithful and grateful affection which gave all it had and felt that it could not give enough, what other recognition or what fitter acknowledgment could he receive from such as these than their distaste and their contempt? What they had to give they gave him; that so nothing might be wanting of the tribute due from inferiors as from equals, from strangers as from friends, to the very sweetest nature that ever gave warmth and fragrance to the quiet and quenchless light of so rare and pure a genius. But it may well be that the Essays of Elia will be found to have kept their perfume, and the letters of Charles Lamb to retain their old sweet savour, when Sartor Resartus has about as many readers as Bulwer's Artificial Changeling and nine-tenths even of Don Juan lie darkening under the same deep dust that covers the rarely troubled pages of the Secchia Rapita. One thing is very certain, which it needs no inspiration to foresee and no presumption to foretell: that whether the number of his loving readers be greater or be less in any time to come, be the quantity of their muster what it may, the quality of their affection must always be the same. The cordial old man,' whose tripping tongue,' heard once, and once only,' woke so deep an echo of regard from the noble heart of Landor, will never be loved a little or honoured with a temperate esteem. Not all, it may be, who share his love and his understanding of Shakespeare or of Hogarth, can be expected to love him likewise: but surely nothing less than this may be looked for from all whom he has led to the sealed and hidden fountains of English dramatic poetry; from all to whom he has opened that passionate and stormy paradise, the turbulent and radiant heaven of our elder tragic writers: for a very heaven it is to those who can breathe its eager air,' a very paradise to such as can walk unhurt among its flaming fires. That a Lamb should have gone in among these lions, and become as it were the keeper of the lions' den, is a chance which provokes the inevitable application of his own favourite form of jest: but it is to be remembered that the one other writer who ever shared with the gentle Elia' the