of art carried to its extremity in "Patronage," the most ambitious, but the least interesting, of Miss Edgeworth's tales. We know that "Trifles make the sum of human things,"

but in "Patronage" every important affair turns upon some minute incident by way of a pivot. A broad-seal thoughtlessly given the direction of a letter casually recognized by the right person at the right moment-set a Minister to rights with his Monarch. A family artfully and progressively tried by every temptation which enables them to exhibit their independence, is reinstated, rewarded, with the mathematically apportioned bounty of (as it were) steam fairies. The phrase of poetical justice" acquires a new meaning from books like these; and not till we close them do we remind ourselves that (to quote a yet truer phrase) the best of mankind must be content with the poetry without the justice. But we repeat, the manner has a larger share in producing this impression, and provoking this repulsion, than the matter of Miss Edgeworth's tales.

We have dwelt on this distinction from not having seen it drawn in any other place; and because it is one, in every respect, important. But whether the peculiarity commented on, (or complained of as may be,) be here rightly estimated, or not: certain it is that the novel written by Miss Edgeworth alone and unassisted after her father's death, is so superior in ease, in play, in nature, and in poetry, to any of her earlier productions of similar extent, as to warrant us in fancying that filial affection overvalued the assistance of the monitor and guide, whose literary counsels she prized so highly. We allude to "Helen" as compared with "Belinda" or "Patronage." It has been impossible to return to this tale, after the pause of some years, without being surprised by its elegance, its vivacity, the skill of its invention, the shrewdness and sweetness of heart which it discloses; the knowledge of life, the sympathy with progress which it registers. Here, at least, those whom the very idea of the Schoolmistress scares, have not to complain of the prim presence or the ponderous pressure of the Pattern Woman. Helen's strength (upon which, and her sacrifice of herself for her friend, the story turns) is set in motion at the service of her weakness-her immoderate craving for love and sympathy. Cecilia's falsehood is not excused, but explained, by the deep and reverential affection she bears her husband, which makes her desirous of

thoughts of an earlier affection, such as she fears he would have disapproved. Lady Davenant's high-toned and intellectual character has a redeeming weakness. She can be credulous, too, as in the case of her page; she can have been womanish, and failing in her duties as a mother, as the early struggles for ascendency which her confessions reveal. And how admirably, as in life, are the strength and weakness of these three characters made to play into each other's hands and hearts! Then, for secondary characters, how highly finished are the persons of the scandalous coterie, and Churchill who hovers, like Mahomet's coffin, betwixt their poisonous world and "the diviner air" of better feeling! and Lady Bearcroft, with her liberality, and her vulgarity, and her cordiality, and her selfinterest. Capitally is the interest complicated; with exquisite neatness "the tow spun off the reel," (and how few novelists, now-adays, are competent to manage a close !) and the sprightliness, the grace, the depth, are unimpaired by the intrusion of any mechanical process which can be detected. Were we given to prophecy in these days, when the Comet is keeping away from us for the express purpose (of course) of rebuking arrogant prophecy, and when, at a moment's warning, literature may rise of form and scope as yet totally undreamed of-we should assert, with the confidence of those who know much and risk little, that the good days of "Helen's" right appreciation, and steady popularity as a classic, are only just set in, if not still to come.

We have written principally of the authoress; for to prowl about the private dwelling of a lady "pen in hand," does not altogether suit our humor. That Miss Edgeworth has taken her place with due distinction in the brightest worlds of London and Paris, cotemporary memoirs have already told. Byron looked out for her even when Byron's Gulnares and Zuleikas were the rage in May Fair. One of the happiest months ever known at Abbotsford (as Mr. Lockhart assures us,) was the one which followed her crossing of Scott's threshold. He wrote of her as a Good Fairy, tiny in stature, lively of eye, kind and gay in speech. Nor is the vivacity dimmed even now which has made Miss Edgeworth, throughout her long life and distinguished literary career, not merely the observed" of mere lion-hunters, and "the discussed" of philosophers and poets, but also "the beloved" of a large and happilyunited domestic circle.

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Ir sounds paradoxical, but is not so in a bad sense, to say, that in every literature of large compass some authors will be found to rest much of the interest which surrounds them on their essential non-popularity. They are good for the very reason that they are not in conformity to the current taste. They interest because to the world they are not interesting. They attract by means of their repulsion. Not as though it could separately furnish a reason for loving a book, that the majority of men had found it repulsive. Prima facie, it must suggest some presumption against a book, that it has failed to engaged public attention. To have roused hostility indeed, to have kindled a feud against its own principles or its temper, may happen to be a good sign. That argues power. Hatred may be promising. The deepest revolutions of mind sometimes begin in hatred. But simply to have left a reader unimpressed is in itself a neutral result, from which the inference is doubtful. Yet even that, even simple failure to impress, may happen at times to be a result from positive powers in a writer, from special originalities, such as rarely reflect themselves in the mirror of the ordinary understanding. It seems little to be perceived how much the great scriptural idea of the worldly and the unworldly is found to emerge in literature as well as in life. In reality the very same combinations of moral qualities, infinitely

“Scriptural" we call it, because this element of thought, so indispensable to a profound philosophy of morals, is not simply more used in Scripture than elsewhere, but is so exclusively significant or intelligible amidst the correlative ideas of Scripture, as to be absolutely insusceptible of translation into classical Greek or classical Latin. It is disgraceful that more reflection has not been directed to the vast causes and consequences of so pregnant a truth.

varied, which compose the harsh physiognomy of what we call worldliness in the living groups of life, must unavoidably present themselves in books. A library divides into sections of worldly and unworldly, even as a crowd of men divides into that same majority and minority. The world has an instinct for recognizing its own; and recoils from certain qualities when exemplified in books, with the same disgust or defective sympathy as would have governed it in real life. From qualities for instance of childlike simplicity, of shy profundity, or of inspired self-communion, the world does and must turn away its face towards grosser, bolder, more determined, or more intelligible expressions of character and intellect;-and not otherwise in literature, nor at all less in literature, than it does in the realities of life.

Charles Lamb, if any ever was, is amongst the class here contemplated; he, if any ever has, ranks amongst writers whose works are destined to be forever unpopular, and yet forever interesting; interesting, moreover, by means of those very qualities which guarantee their non-popularity. The same qualities which will be found forbidding to the worldly and the thoughtless, which will be found insipid to many even amongst robust and powerful minds, are exactly those which will continue to command a select audience in every generation. The prose essays under the signature of Elia form the most delightftl section amongst Lamb's works. They traverse a peculiar field of observation, sequestered from general interest; and they are composed in a spirit too delicate and unobtrusive to catch the ear of the noisy crowd, clamoring for strong sensations. But this retiring delicacy itself, the pensiveness chequered by gleams of the fanciful, and the humor that is touched with cross-lights of pathos, together with the picturesque quaintness of the objects casually

from its scattered parts is inevitable without an effort. Still it is always a satisfaction in knowing a result, to know also its why and how; and in so far as every character is likely to be modified by the particular experience, sad or joyous, through which the life has travelled, it is a good contribution towards the knowledge of that resulting character as a whole to have a sketch of that particular experience. What trials did it impose? What energies did it task? What temptations did it unfold? These calls upon the moral powers, which in music so stormy, many a life is doomed to hear, how were they faced? The character in a capital degree moulds oftentimes the life, but the life always in a subordinate degree moulds the character. And the character being in this case of Lamb so much of a key to the writings, it becomes important that the life should be traced, however briefly, as a key to the char

acter.

That is one reason for detaining the reader with some slight record of Lamb's career. Such a record by preference and of right belongs to a case where the intellectual display, which is the sole ground of any public interest at all in the man, has been intensely modified by the humanities and moral personalities distinguishing the subject. We read a Physiology, and need no information as to the life and conversation of its author: a meditative poem becomes far better understood by the light of such information; but a work of genial and at the same time eccentric sentiment, wandering upon untrodden paths, is barely intelligible without it. There is a good reason for arresting judgment on the writer, that the court may receive evidence on the life of the man. But there is another reason, and, in any other place, a better; which reason lies in the extraordinary value of the life considered separately for itself. Logically, it is not allowable to say that here; and, considering the principal purpose of this paper, any possible independent value of the life must rank as a better reason for reporting it. Since, in a case where the original object is professedly to estimate the writings of a man, whatever promises to further that object must, merely by that tendency, have, in relation to that place, a momentary advantage which it would lose if valued upon a more abstract scale. Liberated from this casual office of throwing light upon a book, raised to its grander station of a solemn deposition to the moral capacities of a man in conflict with calamity-viewed as a return made into the chanceries of heaven, upon

an issue directed from that court to try the amount of power lodged in a poor desolate pair of human creatures for facing the very anarchy of storms-this obscure life of the two Lambs, brother and sister, (for the two lives were one life,) rises into a grandeur that is not paralleled once in a generation.

Rich, indeed, in moral instruction was the life of Charles Lamb; and perhaps in one chief result it offers to the thoughtful observer a lesson of consolation that is awful, and of hope that ought to be immortal, viz., in the record which it furnishes, that by meekness of submission, and by earnest conflict with evil, in the spirit of cheerfulness, it is possible ultimately to disarm or to blunt the very heaviest of curses-even the curse of lunacy. Had it been whispered, in hours of infancy, to Lamb, by the angel who stood by his cradle-"Thou, and the sister that walks by ten years before thee, shall be through life, each to each, the solitary fountain of comfort; and except it be from this fountain of mutual love, except it be as brother and sister, ye shall not taste the cup of peace on earth!"-here, if there was sorrow in reversion, there was also consolation.

But what funeral swamps would have instantly engulfed this consolation had some meddling fiend prolonged the revelation, and, holding up the curtain from the sad future a little longer, had said scornfully—“ Peace on earth! Peace for you two, Charles and Mary Lamb! What peace is possible under the curse which even now is gathering against your heads? Is there peace on earth for the lunatic-peace for the parenticide-peace for the girl that, without warning, and without time granted for a penitential cry to heaven, sends her mother to the last audit?” And then, without treachery, speaking bare truth, this prophet of wo might have added

"Thou also, thyself, Charles Lamb, thou in thy proper person, shalt enter the skirts of this dreadful hail-storm: even thou shalt taste the secrets of lunacy, and enter as a captive its house of bondage; whilst over thy sister the accursed scorpion shall hang suspended through life, like Death hanging over the beds of hospitals, striking at times, but more often threatening to strike; or withdrawing its instant menaces only to lay bare her mind more bitterly to the persecutions of a haunted memory!" Considering the nature of the calamity, in the first place; considering, in the second place, its life-long duration; and, in the last place, considering the quality of the resistance by which it was met, and under what circumstances of humble re

sources in money or friends-we have come to the deliberate judgment, that the whole range of history scarcely presents a more affecting spectacle of perpetual sorrow, humiliation, or conflict, and that was supported to the end (that is, through forty years) with more resignation, or with more absolute victory.

Charles Lamb was born in February of the year 1775. His immediate descent was humble; for his father, though on one particular occasion civilly described as a "scrivener," was in reality a domestic servant to Mr. Salt -a bencher (and therefore a barrister of some standing) in the Inner Temple. John Lamb the father belonged by birth to Lincoln; from which city, being transferred to London whilst yet a boy, he entered the service of Mr. Salt without delay; and apparently from this period throughout his life continued in this good man's household to support the honorable relation of a Roman client to his patronus, much more than that of a mercenary servant to a transient and capricious master. The terms on which he seems to have lived with the family of the Lambs, argue a kindness and a liberality of nature on both sides. John Lamb recommended himself as an attendant by the versatility of his accomplishments; and Mr. Salt, being a widower without children, which means in effect an old bachelor, naturally valued that encyclopædic range of dexterity which made his house independent of external aid for every mode of service. To kill one's own mutton is but an operose way of arriving at a dinner, and often a more costly way; whereas to combine one's own carpenter, locksmith, hair-dresser, groom, &c., all in one man's person to have a Robinson Crusoe, up to all emergencies of life, always in waiting, is a luxury of the highest class for one who values his ease.

A consultation is held more freely with a man familiar to one's eye, and more profitably with a man aware of one's peculiar habits. And another advantage from such an arrangement is, that one gets any little alteration or repair executed on the spot. To hear is to obey, and by an inversion of Pope's rule,

One always is, and never to be, blest.

People of one sole accomplishment, like the homo unius libri, are usually within that narrow circle disagreeably perfect, and therefore apt to be arrogant. People who can do all things, usually do every one of them ill; and living in a constant effort to deny this

too palpable fact, they become irritably vain. But Mr. Lamb the elder seems to have been bent on perfection. He did all things; he did them all well; and yet was neither gloomily arrogant, nor testily vain. And being conscious apparently that all mechanic excellencies tend to illiberal results, unless counteracted by perpetual sacrifices to the Muses

he went so far as to cultivate poetry: he even printed his poems, and were we possessed of a copy, (which we are not, nor probably is the Vatican,) it would give us pleasure at this point to digress for a moment, and to cut them up, purely on considerations of respect to the author's memory. It is hardly to be supposed that they did not really merit castigation; and we should best show the sincerity of our respect for Mr. Lamb, senior, in all those cases where we could conscientiously profess respect by an unlimited application of the knout in the cases where we could not.

The whole family of the Lambs seem to have won from Mr. Salt the consideration which is granted to humble friends; and from acquaintances nearer to their own standing, to have won a tenderness of esteem such as is granted to decaying gentry. Yet, naturally, the social rank of the parents, as people still living, must have operated disadvantageously for the children. It is hard, even for the practised philosopher, to distinguish aristocratic graces of manner, and capacities of delicate feeling, in people whose very hearth and dress bear witness to the servile humility of their station. Yet such distinctions, as wild gifts of nature, timidly and half-unconsciously asserted themselves in the unpretending Lambs. Already in their favor there existed a silent privilege analogous to the famous one of Lord Kinsale. He, by special grant from the Crown, is allowed, when standing before the King, to forget that he is not himself a king: the bearer of that Peerage, through all generations, has the privilege of wearing his hat in the Royal presence. By a general though tacit concession of the same nature, the rising generation of the Lambs, John and Charles, the two sons, and Mary Lamb, the only daughter, were permitted to forget that their grandmother had been a housekeeper for sixty years, and that their father had worn a livery. Charles Lamb, individually, was so entirely humble, and so careless of social distinctions, that he has taken pleasure in recurring to these very facts in the family records amongst the most genial of his Elia recollections. He only continued to remember, without shame, and with