27 Charles Lamb

Dr. Neeru Tandon

CONTENTS

26.1    LEARNING OUTCOME

26.2    SHORT BIOGRAPHY

26.3    WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB

26.4    LAMB AS AN ESSAYIST

26.5     DREAM CHILDREN

26.6      THE CONVALESCENT

26.7      POOR RELATIONS

26.8      A Bachelor’s Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People

26.9       PROSE STYLE

26.1 LEARNING OUTCOME: The students will learn about Charles Lamb, his essays and his prose style. The students will grasp the basic essentials about Lamb and his famous essays. Multiple-choice exercises will help them in assessing their knowledge and understanding of the work. Bibliography and list of websites will help them in their in-depth study and further reading. Critical quotes and quotes from the book will also help them in understanding various literary aspects of his essays.

26.2 SHORT BIOGRAPHY of CHARLES LAMB

Charles Lamb

Birth: February 10, 1775, London, England.

Death: December 27, 1834, Edmonton.

Genre: Essays and Criticism.

Best Known For: Essays of Elia (1823-33)

Father: John Lamb

Mother: Elizabeth Field Lamb

School: Christ’s Hospital (till 1789)

His Best Known Poem: The Old Familiar Faces (1789)

His Finest Poetic Achievement: On an Infant Dying As Soon As It Was Born‖ (1828)

Charles entered at Christ’s Hospital, a London charity school of merit, on 9 October 1782. Here he met great literary figure Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who remained his close friend for a very long time. On 23 November 1789, because of his stammering Lamb left his school and was sent to Hertfordshire to his ill grandmother,. In September 1791 he started working as a clerk first at the South Sea House and then at the East India Company, where he remained for thirty-three years.

In Hertfordshire, Lamb fell in love with Ann Simmons. His “Anna” sonnets, which appeared in the 1796 and 1797 editions of Coleridge’s Poems, have a sentimental, nostalgic quality. All were written after the love affair had ended, to Lamb’s regret. His early novel, A Tale of Rosamund

Gray (1798), is also rooted in the Ann episode. Two of Lamb’s early sonnets are addressed to his sister Mary, who was ten years older than Charles. She had mothered him as a child. But unfortunately Mary became mentally unstable and on 22 September 1796 Mary killed their mother with a carving knife. Lamb at twenty-two took full legal responsibility for her for life, to avoid her permanent confinement in a madhouse. She also developed skills as a writer. But she was almost annually visited by the depressive illness which led to her confinement for weeks at a time in a private hospital in Hoxton. (Lamb too had been confined briefly at Hoxton for his mental state in 1795, but there was no later recurrence.) In 1819, at age 44, Lamb again fell in love with an actress, Fanny Kelly, of Covent Garden, and proposed marriage. She refused him, and he died a bachelor. His collected essays, under the title Essays of Elia, were published in 1823

In the years 1820-1825 Lamb made his reputation as Elia in the London Magazine. By 1825, though he was still a clerk, Lamb’s salary had risen after long service, and he was able to retire at fifty with a good pension and provision for Mary. In 1834, Lamb fell and died of erysipelas a few days later. Mary lived on, with a paid companion, till 1847.

Some of Lamb’s fondest childhood memories were of time spent with Mrs. Field, his maternal grandmother, who was for many years a servant to the Plummer family in Hertfordshire. Charles often visited this place and was in love with it.

Christ’s Hospital was a typical English boarding school and many students later wrote of the terrible violence they suffered there. Years later, in his essay “Christ‘s Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago,” Lamb described these events, speaking of himself in the third person as  Charles Lamb suffered from a stammer and this “an unconquerable impediment” in his speech robbed him of many things he really deserved. While Coleridge and other scholarly boys were able to go on to Cambridge, Lamb left school at fourteen and was forced to find a more prosaic career.

Charles Lamb, having been to school with Samuel Coleridge, counted Coleridge as perhaps his closest, and certainly his oldest, friend. On his deathbed, Coleridge had a mourning ring sent to Lamb and his sister. Accidentally, Lamb’s first publication was in 1796, when four sonnets by “Mr. Charles Lamb of the India House” appeared in Coleridge’s Poems on Various Subjects. In 1797 he contributed additional blank verse to the second edition, and met Coleridge, William and Dorothy Wordsworth. In London, Lamb became familiar with a group of young writers who supported political reform, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt, and Leigh Hunt. Lamb created a portrait of his father in his “Elia on the Old Benchers” under the name Lovel. Lamb’s older brother was too much his senior to be a youthful companion to the boy but his sister Mary, being born eleven years before him, was probably his closest playmate. Lamb was also cared for by his paternal aunt Hetty, who seems to have had a particular fondness for him. A number of writings by both Charles and Mary suggest that the conflict between Aunt Hetty and her sister-in-law created a certain degree of tension in the Lamb household. However, Charles speaks fondly of her and her presence in the house seems to have brought a great deal of comfort  to  him.

He died of a streptococcal infection, erysipelas, on 27 December 1834, just a few months after Coleridge. Lamb is buried in All Saints’ Churchyard, Edmonton. His sister, who was ten years his senior, survived him for more than a dozen years. She is buried beside him.

26.3: His works:

Though soon after his mother’s death he announced his intention to leave poetry “to my betters,” Lamb continued to write verse of various kinds throughout his life: sonnets, lyrics, blank verse, light verse, prologues and epilogues to the plays of friends, satirical verse, verse translations, verse for children, and finally Album Verses (1830), written to please young ladies who kept books of such tributes.

Lamb’s prestigious essays did not appear in published form until about 1821. It was then that Lamb began contributing to The London Magazine a series of essays by “Elia.” The essays ran until 1823. Their popularity led to a second series between 1823 and 1825, also largely published in The London Magazine. This second series was published together as a book in 1833, The Last Essays of Elia.

From a fairly young age Lamb desired to be a poet but never gained the success that he had hoped. Lamb lived under the poetic shadow of his friend Coleridge. In the final years of the 18th century Lamb began to work on prose with the novella entitled Rosamund Gray, a story of a young girl who was thought to be inspired by Ann Simmons, with whom Charles Lamb was thought to be in love. Although the story is not particularly successful as a narrative because of Lamb’s poor sense of plot, it was well thought of by Lamb’s contemporaries and led Shelley to observe ―what a lovely thing is Rosamund Gray! How much knowledge of the sweetest part of our nature in it.

In the first years of the 19th century Lamb began his fruitful literary cooperation with his sister Mary. Together they wrote at least three books for William Godwin‘s Juvenile Library. The most successful of these was of course Tales From Shakespeare. Lamb also contributed a footnote to Shakespearean studies at this time with his essay “On the Tragedies of Shakespeare, ‘Lamb‘s first appearances in print were as a poet, with contributions to collections by Coleridge (1796) and by Charles Lloyd (1798).

1798:  A Tale of Rosamund Gray, a prose romance

1802: John Woodvil, a poetic tragedy.

1807: Tales from Shakespeare, published by Lamb and his sister Mary.

1808: The Adventures of Ulysses.( A children‘s version of the Odyssey)

1808: Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespeare ( a selection of scenes from Elizabethan dramas)

1809: Mrs. Leicester’s School, (a collection of stories)

1820: Publication of his remarkable letters and the essays that he wrote under the pseudonym Elia for London Magazine.

COMMENTS ON LAMB

• His intensity of emotion is never once matched with an intensely personal manner of expression: he does not find the one perfect mould, and hardly ever lights upon the miraculous right word….” – A C Ward
• His poetry,” “makes a pendant to his Essays, and it is a lustrous and significant pendant.” The roles of artist and critic, of course, demand very different abilities: Lamb was, in correspondence, an able critic of the poetry of Coleridge and Wordsworth, who sometimes took his advice. Seymour
• “Mr. Lamb has succeeded, not by conforming to the Spirit of the Age, but in opposition to it. He prefers bye-ways to highways. When the full tide of human life pours along to some festive show, to some pageant of a day, Elia would stand on one side to look over an old book-stall, or stroll down some deserted pathway in search of a pensive description over a tottering doorway, or some quaint device in architecture, illustrative of embryo art and ancient manners. — Mr. Lamb has the very soul of an antiquarian, and this implies a reflecting humanity; He is shy, sensitive, the reverse of every thing coarse, vulgar, obtrusive, and common-place. ….. William Hazlitt (Elia, and Geoffrey Crayon.)
• Lamb was “the very noblest of human beings … [he had] the habit of hoping cheerfully and kindly on behalf of those who were otherwise objects of moral blame. .. [Lamb would come to no] final conclusions [or to] any opinions with regard to any individual which seemed to shut him out from the sympathy or the brotherly feeling of the just and good … Thomas De Quincey

26.4    LAMB AS AN ESSAYIST

Charles Lamb, the Prince of English Essayist, occupies a distinctive place as an English writer. If Bacon is remembered for his massive wisdom and Browne for his lofty heights of eloquence in his musical prose, Lamb will always be remembered for his charm. Hugh Walker remarked, ‘‘ A man may be most sagacious and yet fail to win love, as Lamb won and still remains it.‘‘\His personal essays were published in the London Magazine, known as Essays of Elia (1823) and The Last Essays of Elia(1833).During the years 1820-1825 ,Charles Lamb attained undying eminence as a writer because of his essays which had appeal, humor, and sensitivity, observation and peculiarities at the same time. The great French critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve admired Lamb’s early sonnet “Innocence” so much that he translated it, but most critics then and now agree with Leigh Hunt that Lamb “wanted sufficient heat and music to render his poetry as good as his prose.” William Hazlitt praised Lamb in high terms: ‗The prose essays, under the signature of Elia form the most delightful section amongst Lamb‘s works.‘‘ Alaric A. Watts, wrote that Lamb’s prose is often admirably poetic, so that “we miss not the rhyme.” See his jingle on Lamb

“For what if thy Muse will be sometimes perverse,

And present us with prose when she means to give verse?”

THE IMMENSE VARIETY OF ESSAYS: Lamb‘s ‗thinking heart‘ could sense a story in whatever he saw or experienced. His thoughts were never presented in a systematic way, rather he narrated his various themes with the help of sudden flashes of imagination and remembrance.

His likes and dislike, his opinions, views and biases all find place in his essays.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NATURE OF HIS ESSAYS: To know the life of Lamb, the best and the easiest way is to go through the Essays of Elia. His essays are deeply personal and autobiographical. In several of his essays Lamb narrated various episodes of his life. In Christ’s Hospital he talks about his childhood. In My Relations he gives a complete picture of his brother, and sister Mary. His father is the Lovel of the Old Benchers and his grandmother appears in Dream Children.

BLENDING OF HUMOUR AND PATHOS: Lamb‘s humour is the mingling of laughter and tears. The precious gift of humour enables him to dissociate himself from the reality and construct a new world of humanity. Beside being real, Humour is the part and parcel of his essays. Hugh Walker has rightly said , ‗‘Lamb‘s style is inseparable from his humour. ‗Humorous touches and witty remarks are there in his serious subjects as well. With humour there is the undercurrent of pathos in his essays. In fact he laughed in order to save himself from sadness. His life full of murder, madness, despair and depression gave him many reasons for using pathos, still his playfulness, courage to fight with life and energy induced a spirit to laugh

LAMB’S LOVE OF MYSTIFICATION: Lamb relished in weaving threads of fiction in the web of truth. In many of his essays he has changed the names of persons and places. Dream Children is a beautiful specimen of mystification. The whole fabric of the Essays of Elia is woven under the pseudonym of Elia. His sister Mary is Bridget, his brother John is James Elia.

POETIC QYALITY: Lamb‘s essays are lyrics in prose. They are rich in poetic cadence and beauty. Simpson said, ‗‘Lamb‘s finest essays are nearest of all to poetry.‘‘ Likewise Legouis also commented, ‗‘Though he did not write of them in verse, his exquisitely wrought prose with its rich literary tone, preserves the poetic history of words and enriches them with echoes scarcely less than does Keats‘ poetry.‘‘ In fact it is in prose that Lamb the poet is to be found.

EGOISM (SELF-CENTEREDNESS): The essays of Charles Lamb may be read as different chapters about his life history. His family, his likes and dislikes, his problems, his feelings all are expressed through his essays. His essays do not merely throw light on his biographical details but they sufficiently reveal his character. A love of Lamb‘s writings is truly a love for the man himself. He loved intensely his books, streets, crowd and his London as well. And this is quite visible in his essays. His life was closely interwoven with his writings.

NARRATOR OF MEMORIES: Lamb had a fascination for everything old and unique. His past experiences had so much fascination for him that no matter what the subject he dealt with, he tended to look backward. He makes Bridget Elia say: ‗I wish the good old times would come again.‘ The remembrances of his youthful days are full of touching pathos. His essays abound in recollections and memories. Their charm lies in past remembrances.

A TYPICAL LONDONER: Just as Wordsworth was a high priest of Nature, Charles Lamb may be called a high priest of City. He loved to live and die in London. Wordsworth called him, ‗ a scorner of the fields.; London offered him a shelter where he felt safe and secure, where he enjoyed full freedom to give free play to his imagination and fancy. He gradually grew so intimate to the city that he could not even imagine his existence without the city. His essays are full of glimpses and pictures of London. We find references of London beggars, old school; play houses, actors and chimneysweepers etc. in detail.

LAMB A TRUE ROMANTIC :In Lamb‘s essays we find a peculiar combination of Romantic and Classical trends. His pathos must be regarded as an essential element of Romantic Movement. Like a true romantic, Lamb felt the acute sadness of human life. Lamb‘s love for the past is however, an essential romantic quality. Lamb was honoured by The Latymer School, a grammar school in Edmonton, a suburb of London where he lived for a time; it has six houses, one of which, “Lamb”, is named after Charles.

LAMB AS A CRITIC: Lamb as Critic (1980) collects his criticism from all sources, including letters. Lamb occasionally wrote as a correspondent, he also wrote some plays, poetry and for children. But it is his prose, which has sustained. He soon comprehended that his inclination was not towards poetry, so he made essays, love of his life. He was a true Londoner. Lamb‘s criticism often appears in the form of marginalia, reactions, and responses: brief comments, delicately phrased, but hardly ever argued through.

Thus truly E.V. Lucas, his principal biographer, has referred to Lamb as the most lovable figure in English literature.

26.5 DREAM CHILDREN: ( SUMMARY)

The children of James Elia, John and Alice, asked him to tell them about – Mrs. Field who was his grandmother-their great grandmother. She used to live in a great mansion in Norfolk. Grandmother Field was the keeper of the house and she looked after the house with great care. The tragic incident of the two children and their cruel uncle had taken place in the house. The children had come to know the story from the ballad of ‗The Children in the wood‘. The story was carved in wood upon the chimneypiece. Alice was very unhappy that the rich man had pulled down the chimneypiece with the story. When the house came to decay later, after the death of Mrs. Field the nobleman carried away the ornaments of the house and used them in his new house. The ornaments of the old house looked very awkward in the new house, just like the beautiful tombs of Westminster Abbey would look awkward if placed in someone‘s drawing room. Grandmother Field was very religious for she was well acquainted with ‗The Book of Psalms‘ in ‗The Old Testament‘ and a great portion of ‗The New Testament‘ of ‗The Bible‘. Grandmother Field did not fear the spirits of the two infants, which haunted the house at night. So she slept alone. But Elia used to sleep with his maid, as he was not so religious. John tried to look courageous but his eyes expanded in fear. When the grandmother died many people in the neighborhood attended her funeral. She was also a good dancer when she was young. Here, Alice moved her feet unconsciously as she too was interested in dancing. Grandmother Field was tall and upright but later a disease called cancer bent her down. In the garden, there were fruits like nectarines, peaches, oranges and others. Elia never plucked them but rather enjoyed looking at them. Here John deposited a bunch of grapes upon the plate again. From all the grandchildren, Grandmother Field loved John the most as he was lively and spirited, fond of riding, hunting and outdoor activities. He was brave and handsome. He used to take James Elia upon his back out for outings, as James Elia was lame footed. But James was not very understanding and sympathetic to  him. John died later and James missed him much.

The children began to cry at the sad turn of events. The father began to tell them how he had wooed their mother, Alice for seven years. When the father looked at Alice she looked at that time very much like her mother. Thereafter, the children began to grow hazier. From a great distance they seemed to say that they were not children of Alice nor of him, they were not children at all, they were only what might have been. When he woke up he found himself in an armed chair. He had fallen asleep and he had been dreaming. James Elia had disappeared. On the chair was only Charles Lamb.

Excerpts from Dream-Children: a Reverie

Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionally great-uncle, or grandma, whom they never saw.

Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grandmother Field once was; and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer —

Field loved all her grand-children, yet in an especial manner she might be said to love their uncle, John L— — because he was so handsome and spirited a youth,

….and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I

had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him.

I courted the fair Alice W— n; and, as much as children could understand, I explained to them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial meant in maidens.

―We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice called Bartrum father. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of ages before we have existence, and a name‖— and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side — but John L. (or James Elia) was gone forever.

—  Main points of the Essay:

The essay Dream Children is a reverie, which was occasioned by Lamb‘s loneliness and the death of his brother John.

• The essay is noted for its autobiographical description.
• Lamb‘s memory takes us to good old days of great grand mother Mrs. Field.
• We also know about his brother John, who died recently.
• Lamb‘s love for Alice is also revealed.
• There is an undercurrent of Pathos in the essay, particularly in the end when children disappear as ‗airy nothing‘.
• It is an extraordinary piece of poetic prose.

26.6 THE CONVALESCENT: (SUMMARY)

The Convalescent was first published in the London Magazine for July, 1825. It was later collected in the Last Essays of Elia which made its appearance in 1833. In The Convalescent Lamb describes his sickness and his recovery from it. He expresses his thoughts in this essay from the point of view of a sickman because he recently suffered from fever. Sickness extends the area of a man‘s thoughts to himself. He begins to think that supreme selfishness is his only duty. His only thought is how to get well. He remains unaffected by inside and outside events of his sickroom. A short while ago Lamb was worried about his friend who was involved in a law- suit. From some whispering in his house he had gathered that he would lose the case and actually the court pronounced decision against him. Lamb became forgetful of his friend‘s misfortune because he focused his attention on the thought how to get-well soon. Lamb calls sickness a magnificent dream and his sick bed the throne of a king because

He feels like a King and enjoys royal solitude and respect. He changes sides very often like a politician. During his sickness a man remains merged in the thoughts of his own self in his sickness Lamb forgets to misfortune of his friend who lost his case in the court of law. In sickness a man thinks of himself in various conditions. His bed becomes a very discipline of humanity and tender heart becomes insensible to the business of the world and the household stories do not worry him.

In sickness a man gets courtesy and respect like a King. But his recovery from sickness makes him a dethroned King. His sighs and groans disappear. His pain enfolds and the riddle of sickness is solved. Lamb tells us that a leftover of the sick man‘s dream survives when a medical attendant visits him. But the medical attendant also changes his attitude at the complete recovery of his patient.

At the end of The Convalescent Lamb also refers to the letter of the editor of a magazine he requested him to note an essay for the periodical. He also reveals that after his sickness he became lean and sick. The essay is more reflective and descriptive than autobiographical. Lamb describes humorously and exaggerative the privileges that a stickman demands to himself .

Main Points of the Essay

•    A few weeks ago Charles Lamb fell ill and was recovering from his illness by and by.
•    Sickness gives royal solitude to a man
•   Charles Lamb lays pitying himself hoping and moaning for himself and he is not ashamed to weep over himself.
•    Lamb is his own best sympathizer and feels that nobody else can so well sympathize with him.
•    But convalescence brings a man to his former state and his sick room is reduced to a common bedroom.
•    During his sickness Lamb became insensible to the magazines, monarchies, laws and literature.
•    The essay contains quaintness and humour.
•    It is one of the most imaginative essays of Charles Lamb.
•    It is a fine representation of the psychology of a sick person.
•   A trivial subject has ben presented as a fine literary piece of humour and wit.
•   Lamb considers the change from sickness to convalescence as a deplorable fall from imperial dignity.
•  The style of the essay is simple and straightforward.
•   It is remarkably free from allusions and Lamb‘s habitual mystification

26.7 POOR RELATIONS (SUMMARY)

In Charles Lamb’s “A Poor Relation,” from Essays of Elia, the speaker describes the terrible burden of the poor relation on a family that was financially comfortable—a sad commentary, actually.

The speaker refers first to the male relation who had no wealth or means to live as his wealthier relatives, and who would stop by—invariably at dinnertime, and especially upon someone’s birthday. He would be fed and be able to socialize for a time. He was a burden to be tolerated unnecessarily. It was just to follow the custom, even though it was something of ‗an embarrassment to the family, a curiosity of visitors, and a challenge to the staff…who were not quite certain just how much respect was to be paid to the “poor relation.” Among the descriptions that convey the burden of the needy relative is… a haunting conscience, — a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity, — an unwelcome remembrance, — a perpetually recurring mortification, — a drain on your purse…

This was a man that one might wish to ignore, but that one could not (in good conscience) send away. He lived an existence with only one foot in the door; and he never stayed beyond one night at a time.

The second aspect of this writing deals with the poor female relation. While the male version of this relative might be considered eccentric—able to carry it off without exposing himself as poverty-stricken—such was not the case with the female relation. She was treated without respect, forever knowing her place and expected to be ever grateful to the “hands that feds her.” She would acquiesce to the opinion of whatever man was present—e.g., the wine they should have after dinner. She was humble and sensible. The condition of her clothing was “something between a gentlewoman and a beggar.” Never was she allowed to forget (nor would she let herself do so) her place. Few opportunities for survival were available to women of her class and her disastrous financial condition.

She calls the servant Sir; and insists on not troubling him to hold her plate. The housekeeper belittles her. The children’s governess takes upon her to correct her, when she has mistaken the piano for a harpsichord.

The third portion of the writing refers to a young man at school who was required to leave the safety of that place and go to live with his father, a poor workingman.

In the last section, the story refers to a school friend of his father who spent time in the speaker’s household when he was young. He came to dinner occasionally and was treated with respect. But once the speaker’s aunt embarrassed him, insisting that he take more to eat because he did not often get it.

Not too long after, he died. Here we can see things from Mr. Billet’s perspective. He suffered in having to take “charity,” the speaker seems to say, but would have been relieved and proud to know—at the time of his passing—that he had enough to pay for his burial. He would have felt this a blessing from God.

It would seem that the burden of this position is deeply felt by those in need—it would seem more so than those who might resent having to give.

IMPORTANT  POINTS:

  Elia starts by presenting a ridiculous picture of a poor relation and ends by drawing a pathetic picture of the same poor relation.

•   A poor relation implies that you are rich.
•   The essay shows marked features of Lamb‘s faculty of combining humour and pathos
•   Lamb‘s description of a female poor relative is no less interesting.
•   Towards the end another incident of mr Billet is reported
•   The essay abounds in reminiscences and anecdotes which are an integral part of Lamb‘s essays.
•   The style of the essay is remarkable.
•   The number of phrases used for describing a poor relation adds charm to the essay.
•   The very theme of the essay is of universal interest.
•   Lamb has shown psychological insight in his description of the habits and manners of the poor relatives.

26.8 A Bachelor’s Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People (SUMMARY)

Lamb describes various oddities of the married couples. Very often they make a show of their love in the presence of guests who feel themselves as intruding upon their privacy. Then Lamb speaks of the show of superior knowledge, particularly by the wives of the married people. They consider the unmarried people as ignorant. Lamb calls children the double-headed arrows. The friendship rarely continues after the marriage of one of the friends. Wives envy the friends of their husbands and they use a number of cunning ways to undermine their husband‘s confidence in their bachelor fiends. Another common fault with married ladies is that they treat people as if they are their husbands. He hopes that they would try to improve their characters, or else he would be bound to publish their names openly.

MAIN POINTS:

• This is one of the Lamb‘s most autobiographical and humorous essays.
• In a humorous and ironical way, Lamb records his complains against the behaviour of married people.
• As Lamb was a bachelor, so he describes the various insults and humiliations that he himself suffered.
• The style of the essay is quite simple
• It is free from the burden of allusions and references.
• It is rich with similes and metaphors

Excerpts

As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my time in noting down the infirmities of Married People, to console myself for those superior pleasures, which they tell me I have lost by remaining as I am.

What oftenest offends me at the houses of married persons where I visit, is an error of quite a different description; — it is that they are too loving.

But what I complain of is, that they carry this preference so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces of us single people so shamelessly, you cannot be in their company a moment without being made to feel, by some indirect hint or open avowal, that you are not the object of this preference.

Just as little right have a married couple to tell me by speeches, and looks that are scarce less plain than speeches, that I am not the happy man — the lady‘s choice. It is enough that I know I am not: I do not want this perpetual reminding.

Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of the least invidious sort.

When I consider how little of a rarity children are — that every street and blind alley swarms with them — that the poorest people commonly have them in most abundance —

As for instance, when you come into a house which is full of children, if you happen to take no notice of them (you are thinking of something else, perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent caresses), you are set down as intractable, morose, a hater of children.

I know there is a proverb, ―Love me, love my dog:‖ that is not always so very practicable, particularly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at you in sport.

But I am weary of stringing up all my married acquaintance by Roman denominations. Let them amend and change their manners, or I promise to record the full-length English of their names, to the terror of all such desperate offenders in future.

26.9 Lamb’s prose style is highly personal and mannered. His essays invoke humour and pathos, old connections; they also recollect scenes from childhood and from later life, and they pamper the author‘s sense of playfulness and fancy. He was as romantic in his writings as William Wordsworth or Coleridge. Charles Lamb is the most delightful and sweetest essayist of English literature. He himself is the subject of his essays and maintains a perpetual friendship with his readers. Lamb’s literary essays were often perceptive and original. He had a particular gift for analyzing character and his sensitivity and perceptiveness made him a valuable essayist.

Main Points of his Prose Style

• Lamb‘s essays possess poetic quality.
•  His essays have a strain of melancholy and gloom.
•  His prose style is a mixture of many styles.
•  His style is based on prose masters of 17th century such as Browne, Burton and Fuller.
• There is little doubt bout the fact that the charm of Lamb‘s essays lies mainly in their style, which is unique.
•  As a stylist he does walk in the past.
•  Allusiveness is another very important feature of Lamb‘s style.
•  Lamb is really an artist with words.
•  He uses words very carefully to achieve his desired effect.
•  There is conversational ease and flexibility.
•  He used short simple and direct sentences.
•  Lamb‘s style has its own originality.

New biographies and studies have recently appeared, and in the 1980s there began a renewed appreciation for Lamb’s prose–though not for his poetry. The Charles Lamb Society of London flourishes, and publishes a bulletin, which has become impressively scholarly since its new series began in the 1970s.

Reference

• Blank Verse, by Lamb and Charles Lloyd (London: Printed by T. Bensley for J. & A. Arch, 1798).
• A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret (Birmingham: Printed by Thomas Pearson, 1798; London: Printed for Lee & Hurst, 1798).
• John Woodvil: A Tragedy (London: Printed by T. Plummer for G. & J. Robinson, 1802).
• The King and Queen of Hearts (London: Printed for Thos Hodgkins, 1805).
• Tales from Shakespear. Designed for the Use of Young Persons, 2 volumes, by Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb, attributed to Charles Lamb (London: Printed for Thomas Hodgkins at the Juvenile Library, 1807; Philadelphia: Published by Bradford & Inskeep, and by Inskeep & Bradford, New York, printed by J. Maxwell, 1813).
• The Adventures of Ulysses (London: Printed by T. Davison for the Juvenile Library, 1808; New York: Harper, 1879).
• Leicester’s School, by Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb (London: Printed for M. J. Godwin at the Juvenile Library, 1809; George Town: J. Milligan, 1811).
• Poetry for Children, Entirely Original, 2 volumes, by Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb (London: Printed for J. Godwin at the Juvenile Library, 1809; Boston: West & Richardson, and E. Cotton, 1812).
• Prince Dorus: Or, Flattery Put Out of Countenance. A Poetical Version of an Ancient Tale (London: Printed for M. J. Godwin at the Juvenile Library, 1811).
• H., or Beware a Bad Name. A Farce in Two Acts [pirated edition] (Philadelphia: Published by M. Carey, printed by A. Fagan, 1813).
• The Works of Charles Lamb, 2 volumes (London: Ollier, 1818).
• Elia: Essays which have appeared under that signature in the London Magazine (London: Printed for Taylor & Hessey, 1823; [pirated edition] Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey, printed by Mifflin & Parry, 1828).
• Elia: Essays which have appeared under that name in the London Magazine Second Series [pirated edition] (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Carey, printed by J. R. A. Skerret, 1828)–includes three essays not written by Lamb.
• Album Verses, with a Few Others (London: Moxon, 1830).
• Satan in Search of a Wife (London: Moxon, 1831).
• The Last Essays of Elia (London: Moxon, 1833; Philadelphia: T. K. Greenbank, 1833).