The hatefulness of average humanity drives him to
distraction and in his madness, like a wounded Titan, he spares
nothing. To the whole human race he seems to utter the terrible words
he puts into the mouth of God:
"I to such blockheads set my wit,
And damn you all--Go, go, you're bit!"
55. CHARLES LAMB. THE ESSAYS OF ELIA.
Charles Lamb remains, of all English prose-writers, the one whose
manner is the most beautiful. So rich, so delicate, so imaginative, so
full of surprises, is the style of this seductive writer, that, for
sheer magic and inspiration, his equals can only be found among the
very greatest poets.
It is impossible to over-estimate the value of Charles Lamb's
philosophy. He indicates in his delicate evasive way--not directly,
but as it were, in little fragments and morsels and broken snatches--a
deep and subtle reconciliation between the wisdom of Epicurus and the
wisdom of Christ. And through and beyond all this, there may be felt,
as with the great poets, an indescribable sense of something
withdrawn, withheld, reserved, inscrutable--a sense of a secret,
rather to be intimated to the initiated, than revealed to the
vulgar--a sense of a clue to a sort of Pantagruelian serenity; a
serenity produced by no crude optimism but by some happy inward
knowledge of a neglected hope.
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