"
But to whatever conditions or circumstances we may owe the existence of
Charles Lamb's letters, their quality is of course the fruit of the
genius and temperament of the writer. Unpremeditated as the strain of
the skylark, they have almost to excess (were that possible) the prime
epistolary merit of spontaneity. From the brain of the writer to the
sheet before him flows an unbroken Pactolian stream. Lamb, at his best,
ranges with Shakspearian facility the gamut of human emotion,
exclaiming, as it were at one moment, with Jaques, "Motley's the only
wear!"--in the next probing the source of tears. He is as ejaculatory
with his pen as other men are with their tongues. Puns, quotations,
conceits, critical estimates of the rarest insight and suggestiveness,
chase each other over his pages like clouds over a summer sky; and the
whole is leavened with the sterling ethical and aesthetic good sense
that renders Charles Lamb one of the wholesomest of writers.
As to the plan on which the selections for this volume have been made,
it needs only to be said that, in general, the editor has aimed to
include those letters which exhibit most fully the writer's distinctive
charm and quality. This plan leaves, of course, a residue of
considerable biographical and critical value; but it is believed that to
all who really love and appreciate him, Charles Lamb's "Best Letters"
are those which are most uniquely and unmistakably Charles Lamb's.
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