Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/216

 200 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Stupendous luxuries in which he means to revel. It is not within my purpose to quote from these wonder- ful rhapsodies, nor would fragmentary quotation do them any justice, their effect being strictly cumulative; but I cannot help citing the note on them, of him whom we all love as dearly as he himself loved old plays and tobacco — the subtle, sympathising critic, whose appreciation of our Elizabethan poetry, and especially dramatic poetry, is all but infallible ; and who has the gift of such exquisite and unique expression. Of course I mean Charles Lamb. " The judgment is perfectly overwhelmed by the torrent of images, words, and book-knowledge with which Mammon con- founds and stuns his incredulous hearer ; they come pouring out like the successive strokes of Nilus. They ' doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe.' Description outstrides proof. We are made to believe effects before we have testimony for their causes : as a lively description of the joys of heaven sometimes passes for an argument to prove the existence of such a place. If there be no one image which rises to the height of the sublime, yet the con- fluence and assemblage of them all produces an effect equal to the grandest poetry. Xerxes' army, that drank up whole rivers from their numbers, may stand for single Achilles. Epicure Mammon is the most determined offspring of the author. . . . What a ' tow'ring bravery ' there is in his sensuality ! He affects no pleasure under a Sultan. It is as if ' Egypt with Assyria strove in luxury.' " — Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, who lived about the iitne of Shakespeare. Well may Mr. H. H. Furness, in the preface to his invaluable Variorum Edition of Hamlet, lament the fine genius wasted in the South Sea House, and say that if England had known what a precious gift she had in Elia, she would have endowed him with un- vexed leisure for the study and interpretation of our grand old writers.