Hazlitt is always grasping some Metternich. He said himself that Lamb's talk was like snap-dragon, and his own not very much 'unlike a game of nine-pins.' Lamb, writing to him on one occasion about his son, wishes the little fellow a 'smoother head of hair and somewhat of a better temper than his father;' and the pleasant words seem to call back from the past the stormy figure of the man who loved art, literature, and the drama with a consuming passion, who has described books and plays, authors and actors, with a fiery enthusiasm and reality quite unsurpassable, and who yet, neither living nor dead, has received his due meed of praise. Men still continue to hold aloof from Hazlitt; his shaggy head and fierce scowling temper still seem to terrorize; and his very books, telling us though they do about all things most delightful--poems, pictures, and the cheerful playhouse--frown upon us from their upper shelf. From this it appears that would a genius ensure for himself immortality, he must brush his hair and keep his temper; but, alas! how seldom can he be persuaded to do either. Charles Lamb did both; and the years as they roll do but swell the rich revenues of his praise. Lamb's popularity shows no sign of waning. Even that most extraordinary compound, the rising generation of readers, whose taste in literature is as erratic as it is pronounced; who have never heard of James Thomson who sang _The Seasons_ (including the pleasant episode of Musidora bathing), but understand by any reference to that name only the striking author of _The City of Dreadful Night_; even these wayward folk--the dogs of whose criticism, not yet full grown, will, when let loose, as some day they must be, cry 'havoc' amongst established reputations--read their Lamb, letters as well as essays, with laughter and with love.