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Elective English–I

Notes 1. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother’s looks.

2. Here John smiled, as much as to say, “that would be foolish indeed.”
With this repeating word, we can see these children almost as clearly and as tenderly as Lamb
saw them. If we take the essay’s main purpose into account, we will find the more real they
seem, the more touching is the revelation of the fact that they do not exist, and never have
existed.

4.4 Sentence Features

Loose Structure and Post-Modification

Generally speaking, the tone of this essay is relaxed and comfortable, which can be attributed
to Lamb’s use of loose structure and post-modification. Let’s study the sentence below:
1. Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch
their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or grandame, whom
they never saw.
2. If applied to daily communication, the former part of this sentence seems somewhat
prolix. However, here it gives us a sense of comfort and enjoyment, for in the essay it
causes our sympathy with the author of the fondness of innocent children. Therefore, we
do not feel weary.

Cohesion

Sentences in Dream Children are long, sometimes containing more than eighty words in one.
The author makes them cohesive with the help of coordination, conjunctions, as well as some
adverbs. For instance:
1. Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their great-grandmother Field was,
how beloved and respected by everybody (Adverb then and the coordination how…how…how…
here function as cohesive devices.)
2. But still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity
of the great house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was
nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner’s
other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to
carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady
C.’s tawdry gilt drawing-room. (Conjunction and here functions as a cohesive device.)

4.5 On Humour and Pathos as Used by Charles Lamb

“Some things are of that nature as to make One’s fancy chuckle while his heart doth ache”
Wrote Bunyan.
The nature of things mostly appeared to Charles Lamb in this way. Lamb does not frolic out
of lightness of heart, but to escape from gloom that might otherwise crush. He laughed to save
himself from weeping. In fact, Lamb’s personal life was of disappointments and frustrations.
But instead of complaining, he looked at the tragedies of life, its miseries and worries as a
humorist. Thus his essays become an admixture of humour and pathos. Examples of his keen
sense of humour and pathetic touches are scattered in all of his essays. Let’s focus our discussion
on Dream Children: A Reverie.

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