"Lamb calls Dream Children 'a reverie', but it does not have the incoherence of dreams" -Discuss.

Ans. Dream Children are the children who live in the world of dreams and fancy, reverie - a day dream. Everyone likes to loiter in the world of dreams and hopes to get what he cannot get otherwise Lamb is ardently desiring in his dreams that he gets married to the woman he loves and that children have been born to him, whom he narrates the story of his grandmother, his dearest brother John Lamb and his beloved Alice Winterton. But his hope vanishes off as, in the end, these shadowy children vanish into thin air. Lamb indulges in wish-fulfilment through a reverie.

Though Lamb roams around in a kind of day dream. the essay does not have an incoherent pattern. On the contrary, it has a well-knit sequence that the readers seldom get in any other story. The most striking feature in the essay is the absence of any paragraph-division. It is composed of a number of separate and separable parts. Dream Children is a completely and complexly written essay, in which dream-pattern weaves the different reminiscences into a coherent whole. In a dream. different reminiscences flow spontaneously and naturally making a round whole at the end. Likewise Dream Children is not divided into paragraphs.

Lamb recollects the golden days of yore and tells his dream children the stories of his affectionate grandmother, Mary Field. who lived alone in a haunted house at Norfolk. A tall, upright and gracious lady. Mary Field, was very kind and tender-hearted and loved her grandchildren. very much. During vacations Lamb and his elder brother John used to spend some days with their grandmother. The lonely gardens and empty house became lively with the joy of the children.

Lamb could never forget the loss of his elder brother John throughout his life, so, it is very normal that he would tell his children about him. John was a handsome and spirited youth who never moped about in the solitary corners of rooms and gardens and liked to ride on a spirited horse over the countryside in the morning. Like a real elder brother. John. loved his younger brother, Charles, so much that once he carried him many a mile on his back when he became lame. But Lamb's wonder world was devastated all of a sudden when John died a tragic and premature death.

Lamb, lastly, took his children to the world of love and fancy. Lamb could not forget his adolescent love and this overwhelming love relationship which lasted for seven long years, became a topic of his discussion Lamb suddenly feels that his dream children become fainter and fainter and the castle he has built in the air shatters in front of him. His sweet heart Alice's children belong to Bartrum who is their father. Life outside is simple and unaffected like Hardy's Nature, unaware and uninterested about the sorrows and sufferings of human being. Lamb's sister Bridget represents this notion as she remains unaffected by what Lamb is dreaming. Lamb is thus harked back to reality as his creative world is shattered. The comparison between Keats' Ode to Nightingale and Lamb's Dream Children becomes inevitable as both the works unfold a poignant moment which has been transmuted into a tenderly pathetic reverie. The loneliness of human life creates a retrospective melancholy and Lamb's unique blending of humour and pathos inspires his readers with the intensified vision of the wistful lustre of life.