Literary Taste: How to Form It | Page 9

short biographies of him by Canon Ainger in the
Dictionary of National Biography, in Chambers's _Encyclopædia_, and
in Chambers's _Cyclopædia of English Literature_. If you have none of
these (but you ought to have the last), there are Mr. E.V. Lucas's
exhaustive Life (Methuen, 7s. 6d.), and, cheaper, Mr. Walter Jerrold's
Lamb (Bell and Sons, 1s.); also introductory studies prefixed to various
editions of Lamb's works. Indeed, the facilities for collecting materials
for a picture of Charles Lamb as a human being are prodigious. When
you have made for yourself such a picture, read the Essays of Elia the
light of it. I will choose one of the most celebrated, _Dream Children:
A Reverie_. At this point, kindly put my book down, and read Dream
Children. Do not say to yourself that you will read it later, but read it
now. When you have read it, you may proceed to my next paragraph.
You are to consider Dream Children as a human document. Lamb was
nearing fifty when he wrote it. You can see, especially from the last
line, that the death of his elder brother, John Lamb, was fresh and
heavy on his mind. You will recollect that in youth he had had a
disappointing love-affair with a girl named Ann Simmons, who
afterwards married a man named Bartrum. You will know that one of
the influences of his childhood was his grandmother Field, housekeeper
of Blakesware House, in Hertfordshire, at which mansion he sometimes
spent his holidays. You will know that he was a bachelor, living with
his sister Mary, who was subject to homicidal mania. And you will see
in this essay, primarily, a supreme expression of the increasing
loneliness of his life. He constructed all that preliminary tableau of
paternal pleasure in order to bring home to you in the most poignant
way his feeling of the solitude of his existence, his sense of all that he
had missed and lost in the world. The key of the essay is one of
profound sadness. But note that he makes his sadness beautiful; or,
rather, he shows the beauty that resides in sadness. You watch him

sitting there in his "bachelor arm-chair," and you say to yourself: "Yes,
it was sad, but it was somehow beautiful." When you have said that to
yourself, Charles Lamb, so far as you are concerned, has accomplished
his chief aim in writing the essay. How exactly he produces his effect
can never be fully explained. But one reason of his success is certainly
his regard for truth. He does not falsely idealise his brother, nor the
relations between them. He does not say, as a sentimentalist would
have said, "Not the slightest cloud ever darkened our relations;" nor
does he exaggerate his solitude. Being a sane man, he has too much
common-sense to assemble all his woes at once. He might have told
you that Bridget was a homicidal maniac; what he does tell you is that
she was faithful. Another reason of his success is his continual regard
for beautiful things and fine actions, as illustrated in the major
characteristics of his grandmother and his brother, and in the detailed
description of Blakesware House and the gardens thereof.
Then, subordinate to the main purpose, part of the machinery of the
main purpose, is the picture of the children--real children until the
moment when they fade away. The traits of childhood are accurately
and humorously put in again and again: "Here John smiled, as much as
to say, 'That would be foolish indeed.'" "Here little Alice spread her
hands." "Here Alice's little right foot played an involuntary movement,
till, upon my looking grave, it desisted." "Here John expanded all his
eyebrows, and tried to look courageous." "Here John slily deposited
back upon the plate a bunch of grapes." "Here the children fell
a-crying ... and prayed me to tell them some stories about their pretty
dead mother." And the exquisite: "Here Alice put out one of her dear
mother's looks, too tender to be upbraiding." Incidentally, while
preparing his ultimate solemn effect, Lamb has inspired you with a new,
intensified vision of the wistful beauty of children--their imitativeness,
their facile and generous emotions, their anxiety to be correct, their
ingenuous haste to escape from grief into joy. You can see these
children almost as clearly and as tenderly as Lamb saw them. For days
afterwards you will not be able to look upon a child without recalling
Lamb's portrayal of the grace of childhood. He will have shared with
you his perception of beauty. If you possess children, he will have
renewed for you the charm which custom does very decidedly stale. It

is further to be noticed that the measure of his success in picturing the
children is the measure of his