Born in The Temple, London, 1775, died in 1834; his father the clerk of a bencher in the Inner Temple; entered Christ Hospital in 1782, where he met Coleridge and remained seven years; became a clerk in the South Sea House in 1789, and in the India House in 1792; his sister, Mary Lamb, in a fit of temporary insanity, killed their mother in 1796, Charles becoming her guardian for the remainder of her life; began to publish verse in 1796; published "Rosamond Gray" in 1798, a two-act farce produced at Drury Lane in 1805, "Tales from Shakespeare," in which his sister shared the labor with him, in 1807; and essays in various magazines, first collected in 1823 as the "Essays of Elia"; went abroad with his sister in 1822; retired from the India House with a pension of L441 in 1825; published the "Last Essays of Elia" in 1833. I DREAM-CHILDREN--A REVERIE[21] Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when _they_ were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk--a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa lived--which had been the scene--so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country--of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Red-breasts, till a foolish rich uncle pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called upbraiding.