In giving this summary account of Lamb's writings it has been thought
best only to keep to a very roughly chronological method, leaving his
letters to be touched upon last. Finding earliest expression in
poetry, he then turned to the drama, fully equipped with knowledge and
a fine enthusiasm, but lacking some of the most vitally essential
qualities necessary to success; he then passed more or less by force
of circumstance--the need of making money and the desire to help his
sister in her newly-found work--to the writing of prose and verse for
children; and later he began to make wider use of the fine critical
instinct of which he had given early indications in his
correspondence. All of these were to be in a measure overshadowed by
his achievement as essayist. That work as essayist was chiefly the
product of his prime--of the days of the "London Magazine"--but he had
made several notable contributions of this character during the
preceding twenty years; essays which are now to be found in different
posthumous collections of his writings--"Eliana," "Critical Essays,"
"Essays and Sketches," "Miscellaneous Prose," and so on. When, thanks
to the kindly offices of Coleridge, Lamb became a contributor to the
"Morning Post," he proposed to furnish some imitations of Burton, the
author of the "Anatomy of Melancholy," but these, not unnaturally,
being adjudged unsuitable for a daily newspaper found a place in the
"John Woodvil" volume of 1802. Yet it was in the journal named that on
1st February, 1802, appeared a brief Essay in the form of a letter on
"The Londoner." In this essay we have Lamb using the same phrases that
he had employed a year earlier in writing to Wordsworth. In 1811-14
Lamb was contributing essays (including "On the Inconveniences
Resulting from Being Hanged," "Recollections of Christ's Hospital,"
and on "The Melancholy of Tailors") to Leigh Hunt's "Reflector," to
the "Gentleman's Magazine," and the "Champion." Eight of these essays
were included in the two volume "Works" of 1818.
It was with the establishment of the "London Magazine" in 1820 that,
as has been said, Lamb's great opportunity came and was greatly
taken. The magazine began, as we have seen, in January, and the editor
soon gathered around him a remarkably brilliant body of contributors.
To their number in August was added "Elia," whose modest
signature--later to become perhaps the most widely-known pen-name in
our literature--was appended to an article on "The South Sea House."
Thenceforward--with the occasional missing of a month here or there,
balanced by other months presenting two--the essays appeared with such
regularity that twenty-eight months later there were twenty-seven of
the twenty-eight essays which were gathered into the volume published
in 1823 as "The Essays of Elia."
The publication of the essays in volume form did not by any means
indicate that the author had worked out his vein; indeed, while the
book was passing through the press he was writing other essays for the
"London," though not with the same regularity; afterwards he
contributed to the "New Monthly" and other magazines. Such of this
later work as he chose to preserve formed "The Last Essays of Elia,"
published ten years after the earlier work.