Mr. Copeland's Lecture.

The number of Mr. Copeland's auditors yesterday afternoon far exceeded the number of seats in the Fogg Art Museum and many persons stood during the entire lecture.

The speaker began by tracing the outline of the important circumstances in the life of Charles Lamb, who was the subject of the discourse. He was born in the Temple in the year 1775, and the family remained there for seven years after his birth. He was sent to Christ's Hospital, the blue-coat school, but not to the university; and in 1800 Lamb and his sister began their "dual loneliness" in the Temple. This lasted until 1817, when they took up their residence in Great Russell Street at the corner of Bow Street in a house which stood on the site of Will's Coffee house. In 1820-when Lamb had already written criticism of the old authors, "John Woodville," "The Tales from Shakespeare," and some other things-the re-establishment of the London Magazine gave him the opportunity for the most characteristic work of his life. Mr. Copeland spoke of the time passed in the Temple, the insanity of Mary Lamb, the childhood holidays at Blakesware, and the friendship with Coleridge and one or two other men, as among the determining influences of Lamb's career.

As a critic, he was insensible to Scott, to Byron, to Shelley, to the contemporary in general; he preferred Smollet to Fielding, and yet could not read Gil Blas; but towards the English writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he showed himself a critic of genius. Although Lamb did more, however, for bringing back Sir Thomas Browne and other old writers to life in the sense of causing them to be read again in the nineteenth century, it is not to be forgotten that Lamb struck a happy vein of contemporary criticism as one of the very earliest welcomers of Wordsworth and Coleridge. As for his style, it has often been said not to be original. For that matter what style is original? Lamb's literary manner is indeed compounded of many simples, but the composition is so individually done as to make the ultimate blending his own. And any page of his most characteristic prose is as much Lamb's as the writing of Carlyle, or Thackery, or Jane Austen belongs to each of those writers respectively.

This lecture is the last of Mr. Copeland's series to which the public will be admitted. The remainder will be open only to members of the University.