LETTER CCXCIV.]

To WILLIAM HONE

[June 1827.]

Dear Sir-Somebody has fairly play'd a hoax on you (I suspect that pleasant rogue Moxon) in sending you the sonnet in my name inserted in your last number. True it is that I must own to the verses being mine, but not written on the occasion there pretended; for I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing the lady in the part of Emmeline; and I have understood that the force of her acting in it is rather in the expression of new-born sight, than of the previous want of it. The lines were really written upon her performance in the "Blind Boy," and appeared in the "Morning Chronicle" some years back. I suppose our facetious friend thought they would serve again, like an old coat new-turned.

Yours (and his, nevertheless),

C. LAMB.

LETTER CCXCV.]

To MR. PATMORE.

Londres, Julie 19, 1827. Dear P.-I am so poorly. I have been to a funeral, where I made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of the mourners. And we had wine. I can't describe to you the howl which the widow set up at proper intervals. Dash could, for it was not unlike what he makes.

The letter I sent you was one directed to the care of E. W. India House, for Mrs. H[azlitt]. Which Mrs. H I don't yet know; but Ahas taken it to

France on speculation. Really it is embarrassing. There is Mrs. present H., Mrs. late H., and Mrs. John H., and to which of the three Mrs. Wigginses it appertains, I know not. I wanted to open it, but 'tis transportation.

I am sorry you are plagued about your book. I would strongly recommend you to take for one story Massinger's "Old Law." It is exquisite. I can think of no other.

Dash is frightful this morning. He whines and stands up on his hind legs. He misses Becky, who is gone to town. I took him to Barnet the other day, and he couldn't eat his vittles after it. Pray God his intellectuals be not slipping.

Mary is gone out for some soles. I suppose 'tis no use to ask you to come and partake of 'em; else there is a steam vessel.

I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts, and have got on tolerably; but it will be refused, or worse. I never had luck with anything my name was put to.

O, I am so poorly! I waked it at my cousin's the bookbinder, who is now with God; or, if he is not, 'tis no fault of mine.

We hope the Frank wines do not disagree with Mrs. P- By the way, I like her.

Did you ever taste frogs? Get them if you can. They are like little Lilliput rabbits, only a thought nicer.

How sick I am!--not of the world, but of the widow's shrub. She's sworn under £6000, but I think she perjured herself. She howls in E la, and I comfort her in B flat. You understand music?

If you hav'n't got Massinger, you have nothing to do but go to the first Bibliothèque you can light upon at Boulogne, and ask for it (Gifford's edition); and if they hav'n't got it you can have "Athalie" par Monsieur Racine, and make the best of it. But that "Old Law" is delicious.

"No shrimps!" (that's in answer to Mary's question about how the soles are to be done).

I am uncertain where this wandering letter may reach you. What you mean by Poste Restante, God knows. Do you mean I must pay the postage! So I do, to Dover.

We had a merry passage with the widow at the Commons. She was howling-part howling and part giving directions to the proctor-when crash! down went my sister through a crazy chair, and made the clerks grin, and I grinned, and the widow tittered, and then I

knew that she was not inconsolable. Mary was more frightened than hurt.

She'd make a good match for anybody (by she, I mean the widow).

"If he bring but a relict away,

He is happy, nor heard to complain."

SHENSTONE.

Procter has got a wen growing out at the nape of his neck, which his wife wants him to have cut off; but I think it is rather an agreeable excrescence: like his poetry, redundant. Hone has hanged himself for debt. Godwin was taken up for picking pockets. Moxon has fallen in love with Emma, our nut-brown maid. Becky takes to bad courses. Her father was blown up in a steam machine. The coroner found it "insanity." should not like him to sit on my letter.

I

Do you observe my direction. Is it Gallic-classical? Do try and get some frogs. You must ask for "grenouilles (green eels). They don't understand "frogs," though 'tis a common phrase with us.

If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne), inquire if old Godfrey is living, and how he got home from the crusades. He must be a very old man.

If there is anything new in politics or literature in France, keep it till I see you again, for I'm in no hurry. Chatty Briant is well I hope.

I think I have no more news; only give both our loves (all three, says Dash), to Mrs. P- and bid her get quite well, as I am at present, bating qualms, and the grief incident to losing a valuable relation.

C. L.

To MRS. SHELLEY.

LETTER CCXCVI.]

Enfield, July 26, 1827.

Dear Mrs. Shelley-At the risk of throwing away some fine thoughts, I must write to say how pleased we

were with your very kind remembering of us (who have unkindly run away from all our friends) before you go. Perhaps you are gone, and then my tropes are wasted. If any piece of better fortune has lighted upon you than you expected, but less than we wish you, we are rejoiced. We are here trying to like solitude, but have scarce enough to justify the experiment. We get some, however. The six days are our Sabbath; the seventh-why, Cockneys will come for a little fresh air, and so—

But by your month, or October at furthest, we hope to see Islington: I, like a giant refreshed with the leaving off of wine; and Mary, pining for Mr. Moxon's books and Mr. Moxon's society. Then we shall meet.

I am busy with a farce in two acts; the incidents tragi-comic. I can do the dialogue commey for: but the damned plot-I believe I must omit it altogether. The scenes come after one another like geese, not marshalling like cranes or a Hyde Park review. The story is as simple as George] D[yer], and the language plain as his spouse. The characters are three women to one man; which is one more than laid hold on him in the "Evangely." I think that prophecy squinted towards my drama.

I want some Howard Paine to sketch a skeleton of artfully succeeding scenes through a whole play, as the courses are arranged in a cookery book: I to find wit, passion, sentiment, character, and the like trifles: to lay in the dead colours,-I'd Titianesque 'em up: to mark the channel in a cheek (smooth or furrowed, yours or mine), and where tears should course I'd draw the waters down to say where a joke should come in or a pun be left out to bring my persona on and off like a Beau Nash; and I'd Frankenstein them there: to bring three together on the stage at once; they are so shy with me, that I can get no more than two; and there they stand till it is the time, without being the season, to withdraw them.

I am teaching Emma Latin to qualify her for a superior

governess-ship; which we see no prospect of her getting. 'Tis like feeding a child with chopped hay from a spoon. Sisyphus his labours were as nothing to it.

Actives and passives jostle in her nonsense, till a deponent enters, like Chaos, more to embroil the fray. Her prepositions are suppositions; her conjunctions copulative have no connection in them; her concords disagree; her interjections are purely English "Ah!" and "Oh !" with a yawn and a gape in the same tongue; and she herself is a lazy, blockheadly supine. As I say to her, ass in præsenti rarely makes a wise man in futuro.

But I daresay it was so with you when you began Latin, and a good while after.

Dear Knight-Old Acquaintance-'Tis with a violence to the pure imagination (vide the "Excursion" passim) that I can bring myself to believe I am writing to Dr. Stoddart once again, at Malta. But the deductions of severe reason warrant the proceeding. I write from Enfield, where we are seriously weighing the advantages of dulness over the over-excitement of too much company, but have not yet come to a conclusion. What is the news? for we see no paper here; perhaps you can send us an old one from Malta. Only, I heard a butcher in the market-place whisper something about a change of ministry. I don't know who's in or out, or care, only as it might affect you. For domestic doings, I have only to tell, with extreme regret, that poor Elisa Fenwick (that was)-Mrs. Rutherford-is dead; and that we have received a most heart-broken letter from her mother -left with four grandchildren, orphans of a living scoundrel lurking about the pothouses of Little Russell