At this time Lamb was a clerk in the "India House," a melancholy and gloomy mansion, with grave courts, heavy pillars, dim cloisters, stately porticoes, imposing staircases and all the solemn pomp of elder days. Here for many years he drove the busy quill, and whiled away his tranquil evenings, in the dalliance of literature. He was an author belonging to his own exclusive school--a school of simplicity, grace and beauty. He neither skewered his pen into precise paragraphs, nor rioted in the verbose rotundity of the day. He picked up the rare and unpolished jewels which spangled the courts of Elizabeth and Charles, and they lost beneath his polishing hand neither their lustre nor value. He was a passionate and single hearted antiquary, ever laboring to prop up with a puny arm, the column on which was inscribed the literary glory of his country. He was familiar with the grace of Heywood, the harmony of Fletcher, the ease of Sir Philip Sydney, the delicacy and fire of Spenser, the sweetness of Carew, the power and depth of Marlow, the mighty verse of Shakspeare, the affected fustian of Euphues (Lilly) "which ran into a vast excess of allusion," and with the deep and sparkling philosophy of Burton. With all of them he held a "dulcified" converse, while his memory preserved from utter forgetfulness, many of those authors who to the eye of the world, had glittered like the flying fish a moment above the surface, only to sink deeper in the sea of oblivion. Lamb possessed in an eminent degree, what Dryden called a beautiful turn of words and thoughts in poetry, and the easy swell of cadence and harmony which characterised his brief writings declared the generosity of his heart, and the fertility of his genius. He could sympathise with childhood's frolic, and his heart was full of boyish dreams, when he gazed on the play-ground of Eton, and exclaimed "what a pity to think that these fine ingenuous lads in a few years will be changed into frivolous members of parliament!" He had the rough magnanimity of the old English vein, mellowed into tenderness and dashed with a flexible and spinous humor. He was contented to worship poesy in its classic and antique drapery. With him the fountain of Hypocrene still gushed up its inspiring wave; and Apollo, attended by the Muses, the daughters of Memory, and escorted by the Graces, still haunted the mountains of Helicon, lingered among the hills of Phocis, or, mounted upon Pegasus, winged his radiant flight to the abode itself of heaven-born Poesy. These were the fixed principles of his taste, and he credulously smiled (for contempt found no place in his bosom) upon the sickly illustrations and naked imagery of modern song. His learning retained a hue of softness from the gentleness of his character, for he had gathered the blossoms untouched by the bitterness of the sciential apple. He extracted like the bee his