They used to be called 'Beauties.' You have
seen Beauties of Shakspeare? so have many people that
never saw any beauties _in_ Shakspeare,"
From Charles Lamb's "Specimens" dates, as we know, the revival of the
study of the old English dramatists other than Shakespeare. He was the
first to call attention to the neglected beauties of those great
Elizabethans, Webster, Marlowe, Ford, Dekker, Massinger,--no longer
accounted mere "mushrooms that sprang up in a ring under the great oak
of Arden." [12]
The opportunity that was to call forth Lamb's special faculty in
authorship came late in life. In January, 1820, Baldwin, Cradock, and
Joy, the publishers, brought out the first number of a new monthly
journal under the name of an earlier and extinct periodical, the "London
Magazine," and in the August number appeared an article, "Recollections
of the South Sea House." over the signature _Elia_. [13] With this
delightful sketch the essayist Elia may be said to have been born. In
none of Lamb's previous writings had there been, more than a hint of
that unique vein,--wise, playful, tender, fantastic, "everything by
starts, and nothing long," exhibited with a felicity of phrase certainly
unexcelled in English prose literature,--that we associate with his
name. The careful reader of the Letters cannot fail to note that it is
_there_ that Lamb's peculiar quality in authorship is first manifest.
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