The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 | Page 2

235 423 Amicus
Redivivus 237 424 Some Sonnets of Sir Philip Sydney 242 426
Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago 249 428 Barrenness of the
Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art 256 433
Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age 266 436 The Wedding
271 436 The Child Angel: a Dream 276 437 A Death-Bed 279 437 Old
China 281 438 Popular Fallacies-- I. That a Bully is always a Coward
286 440 II. That Ill-gotten Gain never Prospers 287 440 III. That a Man
must not Laugh at his own Jest 287 440 IV. That such a One shows his
Breeding.--That it is Easy to Perceive he is no Gentleman 288 440 V.
That the Poor Copy the Vices of the Rich 288 440 VI. That Enough is
as Good as a Feast 290 440 VII. Of Two Disputants, the Warmest is

Generally in the Wrong 291 440 VIII. That Verbal Allusions are not
Wit, because they will not Bear a Translation 292 440 IX. That the
Worst Puns are the Best 292 440 X. That Handsome is that Handsome
does 294 441 XI. That We must not look a Gift-horse in the Mouth 296
441 XII. That Home is Home though it is never so Homely 298 442
XIII. That You must Love Me, and Love my Dog 302 442 XIV. That
We should Rise with the Lark 305 443 XV. That We should Lie Down
with the Lamb 308 443 XVI. That a Sulky Temper is a Misfortune 309
443
APPENDIX TEXT NOTE PAGE PAGE
On Some of the Old Actors (London Magazine, Feb., 1822) 315 444
The Old Actors (London Magazine, April, 1822) 322 444 The Old
Actors (London Magazine, October, 1822) 331 444
NOTES 337 INDEX 447
FRONTISPIECE
ELIA
From a Drawing by Daniel Maclise, now preserved in the Victoria and
Albert Museum.

ELIA
(_From the 1st Edition, 1823_)
THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE
Reader, in thy passage from the Bank--where thou hast been receiving
thy half-yearly dividends (supposing thou art a lean annuitant like
myself)--to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, or
Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban retreat northerly,--didst thou
never observe a melancholy looking, handsome, brick and stone edifice,
to the left--where Threadneedle-street abuts upon Bishopsgate? I dare
say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals ever gaping wide,
and disclosing to view a grave court, with cloisters and pillars, with few
or no traces of goers-in or comers-out--a desolation something like
Balclutha's.[1]
This was once a house of trade,--a centre of busy interests. The throng
of merchants was here--the quick pulse of gain--and here some forms
of business are still kept up, though the soul be long since fled. Here
are still to be seen stately porticos; imposing staircases; offices roomy
as the state apartments in palaces--deserted, or thinly peopled with a

few straggling clerks; the still more sacred interiors of court and
committee rooms, with venerable faces of beadles,
door-keepers--directors seated in form on solemn days (to proclaim a
dead dividend,) at long worm-eaten tables, that have been mahogany,
with tarnished gilt-leather coverings, supporting massy silver inkstands
long since dry;--the oaken wainscots hung with pictures of deceased
governors and sub-governors, of queen Anne, and the two first
monarchs of the Brunswick dynasty;--huge charts, which subsequent
discoveries have antiquated;--dusty maps of Mexico, dim as
dreams,--and soundings of the Bay of Panama!--The long passages
hung with buckets, appended, in idle row, to walls, whose substance
might defy any, short of the last, conflagration;--with vast ranges of
cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces of eight once lay, an
"unsunned heap," for Mammon to have solaced his solitary heart
withal,--long since dissipated, or scattered into air at the blast of the
breaking of that famous BUBBLE.--
Such is the SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. At least, such it was forty years ago,
when I knew it,--a magnificent relic! What alterations may have been
made in it since, I have had no opportunities of verifying. Time, I take
for granted, has not freshened it. No wind has resuscitated the face of
the sleeping waters. A thicker crust by this time stagnates upon it. The
moths, that were then battening upon its obsolete ledgers and
day-books, have rested from their depredations, but other light
generations have succeeded, making fine fretwork among their single
and double entries. Layers of dust have accumulated (a superfoetation
of dirt!) upon the old layers, that seldom used to be disturbed, save by
some curious finger, now and then, inquisitive to explore the mode of
book-keeping in Queen Anne's reign; or, with less hallowed curiosity,
seeking to unveil some of the mysteries of that tremendous HOAX,
whose extent the petty peculators of our day look back upon with the
same expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambition of
rivalry, as would become the