Another volume of _Essays of Elia_ was published in 1833. In 1834 Lamb
sorrowed over the death of Coleridge, and in November of the same year
death came to him. Of all English critics Carlyle is the only one who
had hard words for Lamb, and the Sage of Chelsea probably wrote his
scornful comment because of some playful jest of Elia.
Charles Lamb's taste was for the writers of the Elizabethan age, and
even in his time he found that this taste had become old-fashioned. He
complained, when only twenty-one years old, in a letter to Coleridge,
that all his friends "read nothing but reviews and new books." His
letters, like his essays, reflect the reading of little-known books;
they show abundant traces of his loiterings in the byways of
literature.
Here there is space only to dwell on some of the best of the _Essays
of Elia_. In these we find the most pathetic deal with the sufferings
of children. Lamb himself had known loneliness and suffering and lack
of appreciation when a boy in the great Blue Coat School. Far more
vividly than Dickens he brings before us his neglected childhood and
all that it represented in lonely helplessness. Then he deals with
later things, with his love of old books, his passion for the play,
his delight in London and its various aspects, his joy in all strange
characters like the old benchers of the Inner Temple.
[Illustration: MARY AND CHARLES LAMB FROM THE PAINTING BY F.
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