the dandy plates, the names of contributors poked up into your eyes in the first page, and whisked through all the covers of magazines, the barefaced sort of emulation, the immodest candidateship, brought into so little space. In those old Lon· dons,' a signature was lost in the wood of matter, the paper coarse (till latterly, which spoiled them); in short, I detest to appear in an annual. What a fertile genius (and a quiet good soul withal) is Hood. He has fifty things in hand farces to supply the Adelphi for the season; a comedy for one of the great theatres just ready; a whole entertainment, by himself, for Matthews and Yates to figure in; a meditated Comic Annual for next year, to be nearly done by himself. You'd like him very much.

"Wordsworth, I see, has a good many pieces announced in one of the Annuals, not our Gem. W. Scott has distributed himself like a bribe haunch among 'em. Of all the poets, Carey has had the good sense to keep quite clear of 'em, with gentle, manly, right notions. Don't think I set up for being proud on this point; I like a bit of flattery, tickling my vanity, as well as any one. But these pompous masquerades without masks (naked names or faces) I hate. So there's a bit of my mind. Besides, they infallibly cheat you, I mean the booksellers. If I get but a copy, I only expect it from Hood's being my friend. Coleridge has lately been here. He too is deep among the prophets, the year servers—the mob of gentlemen annuals. But they'll cheat him, I know. And now, dear B. B., the sun shining out merrily, and the dirty clouds we had yesterday having washed their own faces clean with their own rain, tempts me to wander up Winch more Hill, or into some of the delightful vicinages of Enfield, which I hope to show you at some time when you can get a few days up to the great town. Believe me it would give both of us great pleasure to show you our pleasant farms and villages.

"We both join in kindest love to you and yours. "C. LAMB, redivivus.”

The following is of December, and closes the letters whic remain of this year.

TO BERNARD BARTUN.

Dec., 1828.

You are

"Dear B. B.-I am ashamed to receive so many nice books from you, and to have none to send you in return. always sending me some fruits or wholesome potherbs, and mine is the garden of the Sluggard, nothing but weeds, or

scarce they. Nevertheless, if I knew how to transmit it, I would send you Blackwood's of this month, which contains a little drama, to have your opinion of it, and how far I have improved, or otherwise, upon its prototype. Thank you for your kind sonnet. It does me good to see the Dedication to a Christian Bishop. I am for a comprehension, as divines call it; but so as that the Church shall go a good deal more than half way over to the silent meeting-house. I have ever said that the Quakers are the only professors of Christianity, as I read it in the Evangiles; I say professors-marry, as to practice, with their gaudy hot types and poetical vanities, they are much as one with the sinful. Martin's frontispiece is a very fine thing, let C. L. say what he please to the contrary. Of the poems, I like them, as a volume, better than any of the preceding; particularly Power and Gentleness'''The Present'—'Lady Russell;' with the exception that I do not like the noble act of Curtius, true or false-one of the grand foundations of the old Roman patriotism-to be sacrificed to Lady R.'s taking notes on her husband's trial. If a thing is good, why invidiously bring it into comparison with something better? There are too few heroic things in this world to admit of our marshalling them in anxious etiquettes of precedence. Would you make a poem on the story of Ruth (pretty story!) and then say-Ay, but how much better is the story of Joseph and his brethren!' To go on, the stanzas to Chalon' wants the name of Clarkson in the body The Battle of Gibeon of them; it is left to inference. is spirited, again. 'Godiva' is delicately touched. I have always thought it a beautiful story, characteristic of the old English times. But I could not help amusing myself with the thought--if Martin had chosen this subject for a frontispiece-there would have been in some dark corner a white lady, white as the walker on the waves, riding upon some mystical quadruped; and high above would have risen tower above tower—' a massy structure high-the Tenterden steeples of Coventry, till the poor cross would scarce have known itself among the clouds; and, far above them all, the distant Clint hills peering over chimney-pots, piled up, Olympus fashion, till the admiring spectator (admirer of a noble deed) might have gone look for the lady, as you must hur. for the other in the lobster. But M- should be made royal architect. What palaces he would pile! But, then, what parlia mentary grants to make them good! Nevertheless, I like the frontispiece. The Elephant' is pleasant, and I am glad you are getting into a wider scope of subjects. There may be too much, not religion, but too many good words in a book, till

becomes a rhapsody of words. I will just name that you have brought in the Song to the Shepherds' in four or five, if not six places. Now this is not good economy. The 'Enoch' is fine; and here I can sacrifice Elijah' to it, because 'tis illustrative only, and not disparaging of the latter prophet's departure. I like this best in the book. Lastly, I much like the Heron ;' 'tis exquisite. Know you Lord Thurlow's Sonnet to a bird of that sort on Lacken water? If not, 'tis indispensable that I send it you, with my Blackwood. Fludyer is pleasant-you are getting gay and Hood-ish. What is the enigma? Money? If not, I fairly confess I am foiled, and sphynx must eat me. Four times I have tried to write-eat me, and the blotting pen turns it into -cat me. And now I will take my leave with saying I esteem thy verses, like thy present, honour thy frontispiece, and right reverence thy patron and dedication, and am, dear B B.,

"Yours heartily,

"C. LAMB"

CHAPTER XVII.

[1829, 1830.]

Letters to Robinson, Procter, Barton, Wilson, Gilman, Wordsworth and Dyer.

HAVING decided on residing entirely at Enfield, Lamb gave up Colebrooke cottage, and took what he described in a notelet to me as "an odd-looking gambogish-coloured house," at Chace-side, Enfield. The situation was far from picturesque, for the opposite side of the road only presented some middling tenements, two dissenting chapels, and a public house decorated with a swinging sign of a Rising Sun; but the neighbouring field walks were pleasant, and the country, as he liked to say, quite as good as Westmoreland.

He continued occasional contributions to the New Monthly, especially the series of "Popular Fallacies;" wrote short articles in the Athenæum; and a great many acrostics on the names of his friends. He had now a neighbour in Mr. Sergeant Wilde, to whom he was introduced by Mr. Burney, and whom he held in high esteem, though Lamb cared nothing for forensic eloquence, and thought very little of eloquence of any

kind, which, it must be confessed, when printed, is the most vapid of all reading. What political interest could not excite, personal regard produced in favour of his new friend; and Lamb supplied several versified squibs and snatches of electioneering songs to grace Wilde's contests at Newark. With these slender avocations his life was dull, and only a sense of duty induced him to persist in absence from London.

The following letter was written in acknowledgment of a parcel sent to Miss Lamb, comprising (what she had expressed a wish to have) a copper coal-scoop and a pair of elastic spectacles, accompanied by a copy of "Pamela," which, having been borrowed and supposed to be lost, had been replaced by another in Lamb's library.

TO MR. H. C. ROBINSON.

"Dear R.-Expectation was alert on the receipt of your strange-shaped present, while yet undisclosed from its fusc envelope. Some said 'tis a viol da Gamba; others pronounced it a fiddle; I myself hoped it a liqueur case, pregnant with eau-de-vie and such old nectar. When midwifed into daylight, the gossips were at a loss to pronounce upon its species. Most took it for a marrow-spoon, an apple-scoop, a banker's guinea-shovel; at length its true scope appeared; its drift, to save the back-bone of my sister stooping to scuttles. A philanthropic intent, borrowed, no doubt, from some of the colliers. You save people's backs one way, and break 'em again by loads of obligation. The spectacles are delicate and Vulcanian. No lighter texture than their steel did the cuckoldy blacksmith frame to catch Mrs. Vulcan and the captain in. For ungalled forehead, as for back unbursten, you have Mary's thanks. Marry, for my own peculium of obligation, 'twas supererogatory. A second part of Pamela was enough

in conscience. Two Pamelas in a house is too much, without two Mr. B.'s to reward 'em.

Mary, who is handselling her new aerial perspectives upon a pair of old worsted stockings trod out in Cheshunt lanes, sends her love. I, great good-liking. Bid us a personal farewell before you see the Vatican.

"Enfield, Feb. 27, 1829.'

"CHARLES LAMB.

The following letter to his friend, who so prosperously combines conveyancing with poetry, is a fair sample of Lamb's elaborate and good-natured fictions. It is hardly necessary to say that the reference to a coolness between him and two of his legal friends is part of the fiction.

TO MR. PROCTER.

My dear Procter-I am ashamed not to have taken the drift of your pleasant letter, which I find to have been pure invention. But jokes are not suspected in Baotian Enfield. We are plain people and our talk is of corn, and cattle, and Waltham markets. Besides, I was a little out of sorts when I received it. The fact is, I am involved in a case which has fretted me to death, and I have no reliance except on you to extricate me. I am sure you will give me your best legal advice, having no professional friend besides, but Robinson and Talfourd, with neither of whom, at present, I am on the best of terms. My brother's widow left a will, made during the lifetime of my brother, in which I am named sole executor, by which she bequeaths forty acres of arable property, which it seems she held under covert baron, unknown to my brother, to the heirs of the body of Elizabeth Dowden, her married daughter by a first husband, in fee simple, recoverable by fine; invested property, mind, for there is the difficulty; subjected to leet and quit rent; in short, worded in the most guarded terms, to shut out the property from Isaac Dowden, the husband. Intelligence has just come of the death of this person in India, where he made a will, entai.ing this property (which seemed entangled enough already) to the heirs of his body, that should not be born of his wife; for it seems, by the law in India, natural children can recover. They have put the cause into exchequer process here, removed by certiorari from the native courts; and the question is, whether I should, as executor, try the cause here, or again re-remove it to the Supreme Sessions at Bangalore, which I understand I can, or plead a hearing before the privy council here. As it involves all the little property of Elizabeth Dowden, I am anxious to take the fittest steps, and what may be least expensive. For God's sake assist me, for the case is so embarrassed that it deprives me of sleep and appetite. M. Burney thinks there is a case like it in chap. 170, sec. 5, in Fearn's Contingent Remainders.' Pray read it over with him dispassionately, and let me have the result. The complexity lies in the questionable power of the husband to alienate in usum; enfeoffments whereof he was only collaterally seised, &c.

"I had another favour to beg, which is the beggarl est of beggings. A few lines of verse for a young friend's album (six will be enough). M. Burney will tell you who she is I want 'em for. A girl of gold. Six lines-make 'em eightsigned Barry C They need not be very good, as 1 chiefly want 'em as a foil to mine. But I shall be seriously