Charles Lamb's Art of Autobiography

Methought-what wild things dreams are!-I was present-at what would you imagine?-at an angel's (Works, 2: 244).' Given Lamb's assertion of 1821 in Witches, and other Nightfears that he no longer dreamed of anything but architecture, these phrases suggest that the 1823 essay in which they serve as topic sentence will be unique in the Lamb canon. Other essays, indeed, introduce the fantastic, notably Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age, and at least once in Dream Children: Reverie Lamb wanders momentarily in a daydream; but for the most part Lamb is wary about expressing subconscious mental activities in fantastic imagery or surreal juxtapositions. He does seem, however, to be suggestible, imaginatively susceptible to the fantasies of others: in Witches his reading of Procter's A Vision produces one of his rare nocturnal visions (2: 69) and, more spectacularly, his 1823 reading of Thomas Moore's Loves of the Angels issues in the visionary gossiping or christening of the babe in Child Angel: Dream. The design of this dream vision of Nadir's angelic love for the mortal Adah is based on the theme of the Doppelgdnger

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