the storm which he goes out in, is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements, than any actor can be to represent Lear: they might more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon the stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness of Lear is not in corporeal dimension, but in intellectual: the explosions of his passion are terrible as a volcano: they are storms turning up, and disclosing to the bottom that sea, his mind, with all its vast riches. It is his mind which is laid bare. This case of flesh and blood seems too insignificant to be thought on, even as he himself neglects it. On the stage we see nothing but corporeal infirmities and weakness, the impotence of rage. While we read it, we see not Lear, but we are Lear: we are in his mind; we are sustained by a grandeur which baffles the malice of daughters and storms. In the aberrations of his reason we discover a mighty, irregular power of reasoning, immethodized from the ordinary purposes of life, but exerting its powers, as the wind blows where it listeth, at will upon the corruptions and abuses of mankind. What have looks or tones to do with that sublime identification of his age with that of the heavens themselves, when, in his reproaches to them for conniving at the injustice of his children, he reminds them that 'they themselves are old.' What gesture shall we appropriate to this? What has the voice, or the eye to do with such things? But the play is beyond all art: Lear is essentially impossible to be represented upon the stage."

The private character of Lamb, with one melan

choly exception, was without reproach. His purity of character may be inferred from his writings. It has been said that, "Licentious writers may be very chaste persons: the imagination may be a volcano, while the heart is an Alp of ice." This may be true; but the converse would not necessarily follow, that licentious persons may be very chaste writers. If the imagination do not affect the passions, the criminal indulgence of the passions will affect the imagination: but the history of literature may furnish exceptions to the general rule. Lamb was not more remarkable for his genius, than for a kind, amiable, and gentle nature. Southey said, "Others might possess the milk of human kindness, but Charles Lamb had monopolized the cream." In his early life he thus wrote to a friend: "I am wedded, Coleridge, to the fortunes of my sister, and my poor old father. Oh! my friend, I think, sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, which among them should I choose? Not those 'merrier days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid,' which I have so often, and so feelingly regretted; but the days, Coleridge, of a mother's fondness for her schoolboy. What would I not give to call her back to earth for one day, that, on my knees, I might ask her pardon for all those little asperities of temper, which, from time to time, have given her gentle spirit pain?" His father died when he was twenty-one; and from that time he devoted his whole life to his sister, who was ten years older than

*

*Lamb did not marry; and the following great authors also decided for celibacy: Michael Angelo, Boyle, Peiresc, Newton, Locke,

himself.

She had been a mother to him when he was a delicate and helpless child; when he arrived at man's estate, he became the protector of her who had been to him in the place of a mother. She is the Bridget Elia of his Essays—a kind-hearted and gentle creature-admirably suited to beguile the loneliness, and soothe the sorrows of such a brother; and their Bayle, Shenstone, Leibnitz, Hobbes, Voltaire, Adam Smith, Pope, Swift, Thomson, Akenside, Arbuthnot, Hume, Gibbon, Cowper, Goldsmith, Gray. It would not be difficult to extend the list. Michael Angelo replied to one who asked him why he preferred celibacy: "I have espoused my art, and it occasions me sufficient domestic cares, for my works shall be my children." To this decision of the great artist, we may oppose the following beautiful sentiment: “A wife who re-animates the drooping genius of her husband, and a mother who is inspired by the ambition of beholding her sons eminent, is she not the real being whom the ancients personified in their Muse?"

The following remarkable array of facts, in relation to the family history of men eminently distinguished for genius, is taken from a late number of the London Quarterly:

"We are not going to speculate about the causes of the fact-but a fact it is that men distinguished for extraordinary intellectual power, of any sort, very rarely leave more than a very brief line of progeny behind them. Men of genius have scarcely ever done so— men of imaginative genius, we might say, almost never. With the one exception of the noble Surrey, we cannot, at this moment, point out a representative in the male line, even so far down as in the third generation, of any English Poet; and we believe the case is the same in France. The blood of beings of that order can seldom be traced far down, even in the female line. With the exception of Surrey and Spenser, we are not aware of any great English author, of at all remote date, from whose body any living person claims to be descended. There is no other real English poet, prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, and we believe no great author of any sort, except Clarendon and Shaftsbury, of whose blood we have any inheritance amongst us. Chaucer's only son died childless.

life-long association of undiminished, ever-increasing affection, from his infancy to three-score years, was most beautiful. In one of his essays he says of her, "We house together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness; with such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy." He once expressed the desire that he could throw into a heap the remainder of their joint existences, that they might share them in equal division. The most affectionate and earnest watchings on her part, were repaid by deference and gratitude. If she were unusually silent, or languid in company, he would ask: Shakspeare's line expired in his daughter's only daughter. None of the other dramatists of that age left any progeny: nor Raleigh, nor Bacon, nor Cowley, nor Butler. The grand-daughter of Milton was the last of his blood. Neither Bolingbroke, nor Addison,* nor Warburton, nor Johnson, nor Burke, transmitted their blood. M. Renourd's last argument against a perpetuity in literary property is, that it would be founding another noblesse. Neither jealous aristocracy, nor envious jacobinism need be under much alarm. When a human race has produced its bright consummate flower' in this kind, it seems commonly to be near its end.' The theory is illustrated in our own day. The two greatest names in science and literature of our time were Davy and Sir Walter Scott. The first died childless. Sir Walter left four children, of whom three are dead, only one of them (Mrs. Lockhart) leaving issue, and the fourth, (his eldest son,) though living, and long married, has ne issue. These are curious facts."

This is an error. Addison had a daughter, whose mother was Countess of Warwick; who was taught contempt for authors, and was proud of her alliance, through her mother, with nobility-blushing to acknowledge the name of her father, more illustrious than that of all the Warwicks that ever lived.

Mary, does your head ache? Don't you feel unwell? and it was not easy to quiet his apprehensions. The world has never produced an union-unselfish, deep, and long-continued-between a brother and sister, more attractive from its moral beauty.

I know a man to whom these scenes of fraternal affection recall former days, when he indulged ardent wishes that he had had a sister: one whom he might have cherished, and guided, and loved. He once had a sister, a few years his junior-himself too young to recollect her. He has heard her little prattle and ways described, giving early promise of ardent feeling, and woman's nature. When two years old, she was said to be most interesting and lovely. And then, this sweet little flower, which had just begun to expand her leaves, fragrant with the drops of morning dew, to the first rays of the morning sun, calmly and gently laid her head on its natural resting-place-a mother's bosom-and looked, and smiled, and died. Died? Life and immortality are brought to light by the Gospel. She was only transplanted from this scene of tumult, and sorrows, and storms, to a more genial clime where she will flourish in immortal bloom: and he may adopt the language employed by David, when told his child was dead, I shall go to her, but she shall

not return to me.

So kind was the nature of Lamb-so constant his friendships-that but one instance is recorded in which he assumed a hostile position. Several articles in the Quarterly Review, which was conducted by Southey, had commented, unjustly, on his theological creed and