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ELIA, AND GEOFFREY CRAYON.

ELIA, AND GEOFFREY CRAYON.

So Mr. Charles Lamb and Mr. Washington Irving choose to designate themselves; and as their lucubrations under one or other of these noms de guerre have gained considerable notice from the public, we shall here attempt to discriminate their several styles and manner, and to point out the beauties and defects of each in treating of somewhat similar subjects.

Mr. Irving is, we take it, the more popular writer of the two, or a more general favourite: Mr. Lamb has more devoted, and perhaps more judicious partisans. Mr. Irving is by birth an American, and has, as it were, skimmed the cream, and taken off patterns with great skill and cleverness, from our best known and happiest writers, so that their thoughts and almost their reputation are indirectly transferred to his page, and smile upon us from another hemisphere, like "the pale reflex of Cynthia's brow :" he succeeds to our admiration and our sympathy by a sort of prescriptive title and traditional privilege. Mr. Lamb, on the contrary, being "native to the manner here," though he too has borrowed from previous sources, instead of availing himself of the most popular and admired, has groped out his way, and made his most successful researches among the more obscure and intricate, though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our writers. Mr. Washington Irving has culled and transplanted the flowers of modern literature, for the amusement of the general reader: Mr. Lamb has raked among the dust and cobwebs of a more remote period, has exhibited specimens of curious relics, and pored over motheaten, decayed manuscripts, for the benefit of the more inquisitive and discerning part of the public. Antiquity after a time has the grace of novelty, as old fashions revived are mistaken for new

ones; and a certain quaintness and singularity of style is an agree able relief to the smooth and insipid monotony of modern am sition. Mr. Lamb has succeeded not by conforming to the S of the Age, but in opposition to it. He does not marra along with the crowd, but steals off the pavement to paca do in the contrary direction. He prefers by-ways to highway W the full tide of human life pours along to some fest.ve d ́e, b some pageant of a day, Elia would stand on one side to axe an old book-stall, or stroll down some deserted pathway in of a pensive inscription over a tottering door-way, or some device in architecture, illustrative of embryo art and angent ners. Mr. Lamb has the very soul of an antiquarian, as the plies a reflecting humanity; the film of the past hovers & rev before him. He is shy, sensitive, the reverse of every ti vulgar, obtrusive, and common-place.

He would fin

this mortal coil," and his spirit clothes itself in the garb at e time, homelier, but more durable. He is borne along w pompous paradoxes, shines in no glittering tinsel of a listaenia phraseology; is neither fop nor sophist. He has none of the bulence or froth of new-fangled opinions. His style runs pare and clear, though it may often take an underground course, or be easeveyed through old-fashioned conduit-pipes Mr Lamb dwe not court popularity, nor strut in gaudy plumes, but shrinks from every kind of ostentatious and obvious pretension into the referment his own mind.

"The self-applauding bird, the peacock see
Mark what a sumptuous pharisee is he'
Merahan sun bears tempt him to unsol
His radiant glories, azure green, and gold
He treads as if, some solemin muse near,
His measured step were governed by has ear
And seems to say-Ye meaner fowl give place,
I am all splendour, dignity, and grace ·
Not so the pheasant on his charus presu sure,
Though he too has a glory in has pa’la zare
He, Christian-like, retreats with n xlest maen
To the close copse of far sequestered green,
And shines without desiring to be sent "

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-porn 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 tomorrow. 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!

Mr. Lamb has a distaste to new faces, to new books, to new buildings, to new customs. He is shy of all imposing appearances, of all assumptions of self-importance, of all adventitious ornaments, of all mechanical advantages, even to a nervous excess. It is not

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