Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: CHARLES LAMB AT THE AGE OF FIFTY-ONE. BY HENRY MEYER. From the original painting at the India Office, reproduced by permission of the Secretary of State for India in Council.] Bell's Miniature Series of Great Writers CHARLES LAMB BY WALTER JERROLD LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1905 TABLE OF CONTENTS THE STORY OF HIS LIFE HIS PRINCIPAL WRITINGS: Poetry The Drama Stories Verses Criticism Essays Letters THE ESSAYS OF ELIA HIS STYLE CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS POSTHUMOUS WORKS AND COLLECTED EDITION BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS CHARLES LAMB AT THE AGE OF 51. _By Henry Meyer_ _Frontispiece_ CHRIST'S HOSPITAL THE DINING HALL, CHRIST'S HOSPITAL SKETCH OF CHARLES LAMB AT THE AGE OF 44 _By G. F. Joseph, A.R.A._ HOLOGRAPH LETTER TO JOHN CLARE THE PEASANT POET, 31 August, 1822 CHARLES LAMB THE STORY OF HIS LIFE Charles Lamb's biography should be read at length in his essays and his letters--from them we get to know not only the facts of his life but almost insensibly we get a knowledge of the man himself such as cannot be conveyed in any brief summary. He is as a friend, a loved friend, whom it seems almost sacrilegious to summarize in the compact sentences of a biographical dictionary, of whom it would be a wrong to write if the writing were to be used instead of, rather than as an introduction to, a literary self-portrait, more striking it may be believed than any of the canvases in the Uffizi Gallery. When he was six-and-twenty Charles Lamb wrote thus in reply to an invitation from Wordsworth to visit him in Cumberland: