The Sun.
London, England, 1866-11-01 00:00:00

r r.

the very same phrase quite as distinctly as his own--
observing that " Coleridge had browsed and expa-
tiated over all the rich regions of literature at home
and abroad." Yet, after all this, at page 7°,
when quoting from Hazlitt's " Conversations of
Authors," he makes the author of that hook
about authors, he makes Hazlitt himself remark
in reference to Charles Lamb —" He follows
learning as its shadow, but as such he is .re-
spectable. [lmagine a respectable shadow, by the
way !] He browses on the husks and leaves of books.
After which—whose, we may surely ask, in our
bewilderment, was originally this oft-mentioned
phrase about browsing on book-lore—Hazlitt's,
Procter's, or Lamb's ? It is a trivial blunder 111
itself, no doubt, but still, if worth the making,
worth also the rectifying! As to the other laps"
already alluded to, though not yet particularised,
it occurs where, speaking of Sir Joshua, Mr'
Procter, not content with remarking, 4 4 Reynolds
was, indeed, the finest painter," even goes so far
as to assert that he was " especially the most superb
colourist of the English school." An assertion that
might have passed muster when Sir Joshua's ad-
mirable pictures first left his easel, and in truth
also for some few years afterwards—but that new,
alas ! when the once radiant pigments have paled
and faded away ghost-like upon the canvass, eau
only be regarded as provocative of the thought that
they at any rate (whatever Charles Lamb may have
been in Hazlitt's estimate of him) are not among
the shadows that are even respectable ! Of tile,
personal history of our charming Essayist, as tilet
history is here related, we are certainly not in this
place about to give the mere epitome of an epitome.
Rather than that, we would refer the reader to 0e
book itself, confident that long before he has closed
it he will be grateful to us for the recommendation
•
In the mere typography of it, it is the goodhest
book we have handled for some time past—an alliPl°
in Solid, sombre, brown binding.-..
on thick toned paper, in noble type that in thi.g,
rattling railway time gives one's eyes a sense °I
gratification to look at. Interleaved among the
letter-press, besides all this, there are fife
admirably - lithographed portraits, taken from
very curious original drawings, pencilled fr°lll,
the life—three out of the five portraits °'
Charles Lamb himself, the other two being por-
traits of his Father and of his Sister—of his Weak;
minded and all-but imbecile Father, and of his illOe
unhappy Sister. The two latter are very distressing
indeed to look at, more especially however the lastt
mentioned—remembering, as who can fail to do that
has once read of it, the terrible history of I\ll
Lamb's alliction. As to the three portraits °
Lamb, they are all of them wonderfully interesting
—one by Cary, one by Meyer, one, and that a very
noble one indeed, by Hazlitt—Mr. Procter's Oil
favourite among the three, we presume, seelfig,
that he has selected it for his frontispiece. 0
most immediately preceding the appearanc
of Barry Cornwall's book, by the way, the-ro
appeared, it may be remembered, a little square-6'
tome about " Charles Lamb, his Friends, his HalOt°'
and his Books," a work penned by Mr. Percy
gerald as a not unwelcome sweeping together "t
stray anecdote, and personal traditions, abeusti
our delightful Elia, littered up and down in varleed
directions and,hitherto uncollected—having escaped
even the eager and loving researches institutel
among others, by such men as Leigh Hunt 'll3O
Thomas Talfourd, in regard to anything at Of n
matter how apparently trivial, connected in any wetit,
with Lamb and his Contemporaries. That pleasatee
little volume of Mr. Fitzgerald's we noticed at 0
time of its publication with the praise to which t
conceive it was entitled. Intrinsically, however'
was no more than it affected to be itself, nain';''
a thing of shreds and patches, jottings by the Wf'tiji
mere aids to a juster appreciation of the simple 3.
noble character, of the quaint and delightful ge°lo
90
of Charles Lamb as a ripe English Scholar, 0614
one of the truest and raciest of all our Eng'o,s
Humorists. That little book, in point of fact, 11,0 r
in its way a simple avant courier to the
more important and valuable tribute to Laelo
which was then already known to be in preparative
by his old friend Barry Cornwall, and which we 133 t,
now had the gratification of welcoming with hearo,
felt words of mingled gratitude r..nd admirati of
Altogether the book is as good as any friend
Ye
either Charles Lamb or Barry Cornwall could ha' t,
It to DC. it zrom first tO
with manly affection, in all sincerity and in alltrut
fulness.