" The last "Fallacy" is
remarkable for a sentence which seems to refer to Alice W.: "We were never
much in the world," he says; "disappointment early struck a dark veil
between us and its dazzling illusions:" he then concludes with, "We once
thought life to be something; but it has unaccountably fallen from us
before its time. The sun has no purposes of ours to light us to. Why
should we get up?"
It will be observed by the sagacious student of the entire Essays, that
however quaint or familiar, or (rarely, however) sprinkled with classical
allusions, they are never vulgar, nor commonplace, nor pedantic. They are
"natural with a self-pleasing quaintness." The phrases are not affected,
but are derived from our ancestors, now gone to another country; they are
brought back from the land of shadows, and made denizens of England, in
modern times. Lamb's studies were the lives and characters of men; his
humors and tragic meditations were generally dug out of his own heart:
there are in them earnestness, and pity, and generosity, and truth; and
there is not a mean or base thought to be found throughout all.
In reading over these old essays, some of them affect me with a grave
pleasure, amounting to pain.
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