Introduction

In a study that is very much about the essay and its formal effects, I begin with a particularly rich example of the most pertinent of those effects – the power of suggestion. Here is Hazlitt’s description of Lamb’s most successful literary persona, Elia, from the Spirit of the Age essays:

Mr Lamb has succeeded not by conforming to the Spirit of the Age, but in opposition to it. He does not march boldly along with the crowd, but steals off the pavement to pick his way in the contrary direction. He prefers bye-ways to highways. When the full tide of human life pours along to some festive shew, to some pageant of a day, Elia would stand on one side to look over an old book-stall, or stroll down some deserted pathway in search of a pensive inscription over a tottering door-way, or some quaint device in architecture, illustrative of embryo art and ancient manners. ¹