CURRENT LITERATURE.
Ella. By Charles Lamb. A new edition. (Bell and Daldy.) The Last Essays of Ella. By Charles Lamb. A new edition. (Bell and Daldy.)—These two pretty and cheap volumes of Charles Lamb's Inimitable essays are amongst the best reissues of the day. The second volume has a very humorous preface written by Lamb himself in the assumed person of a surviving friend,—a preface which he was per- suaded to withdraw from the original edition, and for having imbued which with so grand an air of patronage, the Brighton Herald with delightful stupidity has reproached his modern editor with bad taste. In it Lamb has attributed to himself "a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like anything important or paro- chial." He was shocked at some charity children curtseying, as ho thought, in an especial manner to him. "They take me for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. What would he have muttered in acknowledging this profound but muddle-headed act of obeisance on the part of the editor of the Brighton Herald? Perhaps he would have muttered, "They take me for a distinguished member of tho Times' staff."
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