Though he too has a glory in his plumes.
He, Christian-like, retreats with modest mien }
To the close copse or far sequestered green, }
and shines without desiring to be seen.’ }
These lines well describe the modest and delicate beauties of Mr. Lamb’s writings, contrasted with the lofty and vain-glorious pretensions of some of his contemporaries. This gentleman is not one of those who pay all their homage to the prevailing idol: he thinks that
‘New-born gauds are made and moulded of things past,’
nor does he
‘Give to dust that is a little gilt
More laud than gilt o’er-dusted.’
His convictions ‘do not in broad rumour lie,’ nor are they ‘set off to the world in the glistering foil’ of fashion; but ‘live and breathe aloft in those pure eyes, and perfect judgment of all-seeing time.’ Mr. Lamb rather affects and is tenacious of the obscure and remote: of that which rests on its own intrinsic and silent merit; which scorns all alliance, or even the suspicion of owing any thing to noisy clamour, to the glare of circumstances. There is a fine tone of chiaro-scuro, a moral perspective in his writings. He delights to dwell on that which is fresh to the eye of memory; he yearns after and covets what soothes the frailty of human nature. That touches him most nearly which is withdrawn to a certain distance, which verges on the borders of oblivion:—that piques and provokes his fancy most, which is hid from a superficial glance. That which, though gone by, is still remembered, is in his view more genuine, and has given more ‘vital signs that it will live,’ than a thing of yesterday, that may be forgotten to-morrow. Death has in this sense the spirit of life in it; and the shadowy has to our author something substantial in it. Ideas savour most of reality in his mind; or rather his imagination loiters on the edge of each, and a page of his writings recals to our fancy the stranger on the grate, fluttering in its dusky tenuity, with its idle superstition and hospitable welcome!