The literary fame of Mary Lamb rests chiefly on her _Tales from Shakespeare_, and a collection of beautiful little stories for children, called _Mrs. Leicester’s School_. The _Tales from Shakespeare_ were written, as so much good work has been, under the stress of poverty. Six of the great tragedies were undertaken by Charles, and fourteen other plays by Mary. The scheme was to render each play into a prose story fit for the comprehension and capacity of children; and the work was done with inimitable felicity of diction, and critical insight into the situations and characters of the world of men and women who live in Shakespeare’s dramas. There is a letter of Mary’s describing herself and Charles at work: “Charles has written _Macbeth_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, and has begun _Hamlet_. You would like to see us, as we often sit writing on one table (but not on one cushion sitting, like Hermia and Helena in the _Midsummer Nights Dream_); or rather, like an old literary Darby and Joan, I taking snuff, and he groaning all the while and saying he can make nothing of it, which he always says till he has finished, and then he finds out that he has made something of it” (Mrs. Gilchrist’s _Life_, p. 119). The _Tales_ were written for William Godwin, whose first wife was Mary Wollstonecraft. His second wife helped him a great deal with his publishing business. She was a vulgar-minded woman, and a pet aversion of the Lambs, especially of Charles, who said, referring to her, “I will be buried with this inscription over me, ‘Here lies C. L., the woman-hater’—I mean, that hated one woman; for the rest, God bless ’em.” The success of the _Tales_ could not, however, be marred by the unpopularity of the publisher and his wife. The book rapidly ran through several editions, and even now a year seldom passes without the _Tales from Shakespeare_ being presented to the public in some new form. A portrait of Mary Lamb has been drawn by the master hand of her brother. She is the Bridget of the _Essays of Elia_, as all lovers of the essays well know. The humour and delicate insight into character for which the writings of Charles Lamb are so distinguished, are also characteristic of Mary, though the humour in her case is less rollicking, and never breaks out in pure high spirits, as his often does. Some of the most charming of Mary’s writings are her letters, which have been published in Mrs. Gilchrist’s _Life_, especially those to a young friend, named Sarah Stoddart.