It was during the latter period of their residence in the Temple, and during their six years in Russell Street, that Lamb produced the greater part of the work he has left--small in sum but great in achievement. It is not the province of this study to dwell on his various literary performances, but it comes within my scope to speak of his sister’s assistance in that literary labour. In _all_ matters he depended greatly upon her. “She is older and wiser and better than I, and all my wretched imperfections I cover to myself by resolutely thinking on her goodness.” During each frequent recurrence of her pitiful craze--when she was forced to be “from home,” as he lovingly and tenderly phrased it--he was lost and helpless. “I miss a prop. All my strength is gone, and I am like a fool, bereft of her co-operation. I dare not think, lest I should think wrong, so used am I to look up to her in the least as in the biggest perplexity.” He did not overrate her. She was no commonplace creature, and she impressed all who knew her well as a woman of fine judgment, of noteworthy good sense, full of womanly sympathies, sweet and serene. Hazlitt commended her as the wisest and most rational woman he had ever known. With strangers she was unpretentious, mild of manner, reticent rather than loquacious. In her bearing towards her brother she was gentle and gracious always, and she had a way of letting her eyes follow him everywhere about the room, in company. When looking directly at him she had often an upward, pleading, peculiar regard. Mrs. Anne Gilchrist, in her admirable monograph, has called attention to the rare tact--excellent thing in woman!--shown by Mary in dealing with her brother’s caprices and foibles, all through his life. Indeed, there was absolute inspiration in her way of looking at, and acting upon, these matters. It seemed to her to be a vexatious kind of tyranny, which women use towards men, just because the women _have better judgment_--the italics are her own! She pours forth profuse strains of unpremeditated wisdom, in this same letter to Sarah Stoddart: “Let _men_ alone, and at last we find they come around to the right way, which _we_, by a kind of intuition, perceive at once. But better, far better that we should let them often do wrong, than that they should have the torment of a monitor always at their elbows.” Guided by such priceless principles, it is no wonder that she succeeded in never crossing that thin line which divides the domain of the judicious adviser, the opportune helper, from that of the untimely, incessant, ineffective Nagger. She once said, “Our love for each other has been the torment of our lives”--torment and assuagement together, as _we_ know, and made sweet mainly by her simple sagacity.