Specify numer of lines for href inside span tag
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I have a span tag, `.lastMessageLink`, with an href inside it, `.lastMessageText`. The text that could be put in `.lastMessageText` could be as short as a couple characters, or as long as a paragraph, but I want to display maximum 4 lines of text. 

The current styling I have, which is not working, is this:

    .lastMessageLink {
        line-height:1em;
        text-overflow:ellipsis;
        max-height:4em;
        overflow:hidden;
    }
    .lastMessageText {
        color:black;
        word-wrap:break-word;
    }

I have looked at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4748798/html-css-specify-number-of-lines-inside-span, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3922739/limit-text-length-to-n-lines-using-css, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1067166/using-css-text-overflow-to-vary-the-number-of-lines-of-text-within-an-element-of, and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3675623/how-to-set-element-height-for-a-fixed-number-of-lines-of-text.

I am open to solutions that use jQuery or Javascript as I have been unable to make progress solely with CSS.