To THOMAS ALLSOP. LETTER CCXXIII.] E. I. House, August 9, 1823. My dear A.-I am going to ask you to do me the greatest favour which a man can do for another. I want to make my will, and to leave my property in trust for my Sister. N.B.-I am not therefore going to die.— Would it be unpleasant for you to be named for one? The other two I shall beg the same favour of are Talfourd and Procter. If you feel reluctant, tell me, and it shan't abate one jot of my friendly feeling toward you. Yours ever, C. LAMB. TO BERNARD BARTON. LETTER CCXXIV.] September 2, 1823. my not writing? Hessey has not Dear B. B.-What will you say to You cannot say I do not write now. used your kind sonnet, nor have I seen it. Pray send me a copy. Neither have I heard any more of your friend's MS., which I will reclaim whenever you please. When you come London-ward you will find me no longer in Covent Garden. I have a cottage in Colebrook Row, Islington; a cottage, for it is detached; a white house, with six good rooms; the New River (rather elderly by this time) runs (if a moderate walking pace may be so termed) close to the foot of the house; and behind is a spacious garden with vines (I assure you), pears, strawberries, parsnips, leeks, carrots, cabbages, to delight the heart of old Alcinous. You enter without passage into a cheerful dining-room, all studded over and rough with old books and above is a lightsome drawing-room, three windows, full of choice prints. I feel like a great lord, never having had a house before. The London, I fear, falls off. I linger among its creaking rafters, like the last rat; it will topple down if they don't get some buttresses. They have pulled down three Hazlitt, Procter, and their best stay, kind, light : hearted Wainwright, their Janus. our fortunes is concerned in it. The best is, neither of The I heard of you from Mr. Pulham this morning, and that gave a fillip to my laziness, which has been intolerable; but I am so taken up with pruning and gardening, quite a new sort of occupation to me. I have gathered my jargonels, but my Windsor pears are backward. former were of exquisite raciness. I do now sit under my own vine, and contemplate the growth of vegetable nature. I can now understand in what sense they speak of father Adam. I recognise the paternity while I watch my tulips. I almost fell with him, for the first day I turned a drunken gardener (as he let in the serpent) into my Eden, and he laid about him, lopping off some choice boughs, etc., which hung over from a neighbour's garden, and in his blind zeal laid waste a shade, which had sheltered their window from the gaze of passers-by. The old gentlewoman (fury made her not handsome) could scarcely be reconciled by all my fine words. There was no buttering her parsnips. She talked of the law. What a lapse to commit on the first day of my happy "garden-state!" I hope you transmitted the Fox-Journal to its owner, with suitable thanks. Mr. Cary, the Dante-man, dines with me to-day. He is a model of a country parson, lean (as a curate ought to be), modest, sensible, no obtruder of church dogmas, quite a different man from Southey. You would like him. Pray accept this for a letter, and believe me, with sincere regards, Yours, C. L. To THOMAS HOOD. LETTER CCXXV.] [Late in 1823.] Cucullus non And what dost thou at the Priory facit Monachum. English me that, and challenge old Lignum Janua to make a better. My old New River has presented no extraordinary novelties lately; but there Hope sits every day, speculating upon traditionary gudgeons. I think she has taken the fisheries. I now know the reason why our forefathers were denominated East and West Angles. Yet is there no lack of spawn; for I wash my hands in fishets that come through the pump every morning thick as motelings, -little things that perish untimely, and never taste the brook. You do not tell me of those romantic land bays that be as thou goest to Lover's Seat: neither of that little churchling in the midst of a wood (in the opposite direction, nine furlongs from the town), that seems dropped by the Angel that was tired of carrying two packages; marry, with the other he made shift to pick his flight to Loretto. Inquire out, and see my little Protestant Loretto. It stands apart from trace of human habitation; yet hath it pulpit, reading-desk, and trim front of massiest marble, as if Robinson Crusoe had reared it to soothe himself with old church-going images. I forget its Christian name, and what she-saint was its gossip. You should also go to No. 13, Standgate Street,-a baker, who has the finest collection of marine monsters in ten sea counties, sea dragons, polypi, mer-people, most fantastic. You have only to name the old gentleman in black (not the Devil) that lodged with him a week (he'll remember) last July, and he will show courtesy. He is by far the foremost of the savans. His wife is the funniest thwarting little animal! They are decidedly the Lions of green Hastings. Well, I have made an end of my say. My epistolary time is gone by when I could have scribbled as long (I will not say as agreeable) as thine was to both of us. I am dwindled to notes and letterets. But, in good earnest, I shall be most happy to hail thy return to the waters of Old Sir Hugh. There is nothing like iuland murmurs, fresh ripples, and our native minnows. "He sang in meads how sweet the brooklets ran, I design to give up smoking; but I have not yet fixed To THOMAS ALLSOP. LETTER CCXXVI.] September 10, 1823. My dear A.-Your kindness in accepting my request no words of mine can repay. It has made you overflow into some romance which I should have check'd at another time. I hope it may be in the scheme of Providence that my sister may go first (if ever so little a precedence), myself next, and my good Executors survive to remember us with kindness many years. God bless you. I will set Procter about the will forthwith. TO BERNARD BARTON. LETTER CCXXVII.] C. LAMB. September 17, 1823. Dear Sir-I have again been reading your "Stanzas on Bloomfield," which are the most appropriate that can sweet with Doric delicacy. I like that, be imagined, just hinting at the fault of the Grecian. I love that stanza ending with, "Words, phrases, fashions, pass away; But truth and nature live through all." But I shall omit in my own copy the one stanza which alludes to Lord B. I suppose. It spoils the sweetness and oneness of the feeling. Cannot we think of Burns, or Thomson, without sullying the thought with a reflection out of place upon Lord Rochester? These verses might have been inscribed upon a tomb; are in fact an epitaph; satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone. Besides, there is a quotation in it, always bad in verse, seldom advisable in prose. I doubt if their having been in a paper will not prevent T. and H. from insertion; but I shall have a thing to send in a day or two, and shall try them. Omitting that stanza, a very little alteration is wanting in the beginning of the next. You see, I use freedom. How happily (I flatter not) you have brought in his subjects; and (I suppose) his favourite measure, though I am not acquainted with any of his writings but the Farmer's Boy. He dined with me once, and his manners took me exceedingly. I rejoice that you forgive my long silence. I continue to estimate my own-roof comforts highly. How could I remain all my life a lodger! My garden thrives (I am told), though I have yet reaped nothing but some tiny salad and withered carrots. But a garden's a garden anywhere, and twice a garden in London. Somehow I cannot relish that word “Horkey." Cannot you supply it by circumlocution, and direct the reader by a note to explain that it means the Horkey. But Horkey chokes me in the text. It raises crowds of mean associations, hawking and sp-g, gawky, stalky, mawkin! The sound is everything, in such dulcet modulations 'specially. I like "Gilbert Meldrum's sterner tones," |