viewer, that illustrations drawn from Lamb counted for nothing in my argument, because his was "a unique personality," a "pure imagination, which even the drama of the Restoration could not pollute." But this seems to be assuming more than we have any right to assume. I cannot take it upon myself to say, for example, that Mr. Bagehot's mind was more susceptible to pollution than Charles Lamb's. I am not sufficiently in the secrets of Providence to decide upon so intimate and delicate a question. But granted that others have a clearer light on these matters than I have, it would still appear as though the unpolluted source were the best from which to draw one's help and inspiration. What really makes Lamb a doubtful guide through the mazes of literature is the fact that there is not a single rule given us in these sober days for the proper administration of our faculties which he did not take a positive pleasure in transgressing. His often-quoted heresy in regard to those volumes which "no gentleman's library should be without" might perhaps be spared the serious handling it receives; but his letters abound in passages equally shame-
