Dublin University Magazine. CHARLES LAMB, HIS FRIENDS AND

BOOKS.

ABOUT this unique and delightful being there has been plenty written in a loving, but official way. His ways and manner of life have been woven for us into a piece, and as we go over it carefully we find but few threads dropped. Some of these, and of very small importance indeed, may be thought worth while picking up. Anything, surely, will be welcome that helps, even in a small way, to bring us in contact with this engaging writer. As we might fancy ourselves in his room after his death, taking up his inkstand-his pen-the book he last read, with the leaf turned down-the folios; "my midnight darlings," he called them, half pathetically-"huge armfuls"-even his forsworn pipe, (and with what reverence and delicacy we would lay our hands on such relics); so we might relish these little "odds and ends," gathered up out of by-ways and out of cornersNEW SERIES-VOL. I., No. 5.

Old Serles Complete in 63 vols.

little shreds and patches of no great quality beyond having a reference to this arch-essayist, and most delightful man. For a writer so unique in his kind, where the species, as he himself said of a book, is the whole genus, surprisingly little has been said. Yet he might be studied over and over again-lectured and commented on by the hour and by the volume. It is pleasant to think that one so nice and dainty in palate as he was about the "dressing" of books-so sensitive and epicurean as regards typography, paper, and editions, should, in his own works, have been gratified by all the little elegances of typography. To be a dandy, or petit maitre, in such things is very pardonable; and there is a fond and delicate homage in the offering of fine type, broad margin, and toned paper, to a writer that we love, almost akin to the flowers and draperies with which the altar of a patron saint is dressed. Charles Lamb would have looked down the line of his own books with fond admiration. They harmonize prettily.

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