collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people, to those who are not used to them. Try him with hot water if he won't lick it up it is a sign he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally, or perpendicularly? That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean when he is pleased-for otherwise there is no judging. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep him for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in India had it at one time; but that was in Hyder-Ally's time. Do you get paunch for him? Take care the sheep was sane. You might pull out his teeth (if he would let you), and then you need not mind if he were as mad as

a Bedlamite. It would be rather fun to see his odd ways.

It might amuse Mrs. P- and the children. They'd have more sense than he. He'd be like a fool kept in a family, to keep the household in good humour with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance, set to the mad howl. Madge Owlet would be nothing to him. "My! how he capers!" [In the margin is written, "One of the children speaks this."] . . What I scratch out is a German quotation, from Lessing, on the bite of rabid animals; but I remember you don't read German. But Mrs. P- may, so I wish I had let it stand. The meaning in English is-"Avoid to approach an animal suspected of madness, as you would avoid fire or a precipice," which I think is a sensible observation. The Germans are certainly profounder than we. If the slightest suspicion arises in your breast that all is not right with him, muzzle him and lead him in a string (common pack-thread will do-he don't care for twist) to Mr. Hood's, his quondamn master, and he'll take him in at any time. You may mention your suspicion, or not, as you like, or as you think it may wound or not Mr. H.'s feelings. Hood, I know, will wink at a few follies in Dash, in consideration of his former sense. Besides, Hood is deaf, and if you hinted anything, ten to one he would

not hear you. Besides, you will have discharged your conscience, and laid the child at the right door, as they say.

We are dawdling our time away very idly and pleasantly at a Mrs. Leishman's, Chase, Enfield, where, if you come a-hunting, we can give you cold meat and a tankard. Her husband is a tailor; but that, you know, does not make her one. I knew a jailor (which rhymes), but his wife was a fine lady.

Let us hear from you respecting Mrs. P's regimen. I send my love in a to Dash. C. LAMB. [What follows was written on the outside of the letter:-]

Seriously, I wish you would call upon Hood when you are that way. He's a capital fellow. I've sent him two poems, one ordered by his wife, and written to order; and 'tis a week since, and I've not heard from him. I fear something is the matter.

Our kindest remembrance to Mrs. P.

To H. CRABB ROBINSON.

LETTER CCCVIII.]

Chase Side, October 1, 1827.

Dear R.-I am settled for life I hope at Enfield. I have taken the prettiest, compactest house I ever saw, near to Antony Robinson's! but, alas! at the expense of poor Mary, who was taken ill of her old complaint the night before we got into it. So I must suspend the pleasure I expected in the surprise you would have had in coming down, and finding us householders. Farewell, till we can all meet comfortable. Pray apprise Martin Burney. Him I longed to have seen with you; but our house is too small to meet either of you without her knowledge.

God bless you.

LETTER CCCIX.]

To J. B. DIBDIN.

October 2, 1827.

My dear Dibdin-It gives me great pain to have to say that I cannot have the pleasure of seeing you for some time. We are in our house, but Mary has been seized with one of her periodical disorders a temporary derangement-which commonly lasts for two months. You shall have the first notice of her convalescence. Can you not send your manuscript by the coach? directed to Chase Side, next to Mr. Westwood's Insurance Office. will take great care of it. Yours most truly,

C. LAMB.

I

TO BARRON FIELD.

October 4, 1827.

LETTER CCCX.] I am not in humour to return a fit reply to your pleasant letter. We are fairly housed at Enfield, and an angel shall not persuade me to wicked London again. We have now six Sabbath-days in a week for—none ! The change has worked on my sister's mind to make her ill; and I must wait a tedious time before we can hope to enjoy this place in unison. Enjoy it, when she recovers, I know we shall. I see no shadow, but in her illness, for repenting the step! For Mathews-I know my own utter unfitness for such a task. I am no hand at describing costumes, a great requisite in an account of mannered pictures. I have not the slightest acquaintance with pictorial language even. An imitator of me, or rather pretender to be me, in his "Rejected Articles," has made me minutely describe the dresses of the poissardes at Calais -I could as soon resolve Euclid. I have no eye for forms and fashions. I substitute analysis, and get

rid of the phenomenon by slurring in for it its impression. I am sure you must have observed this defect, or peculiarity, in my writings; else the delight would be incalculable in doing such a thing for Mathews-whom I greatly like—and Mrs. Mathews, whom I almost greatlier like. What a feast 'twould be to be sitting at the pictures painting 'em into words; but I could almost as soon make words into pictures. I speak this deliberately, and not out of modesty. I pretty well know what I can't do.

My sister's verses are homely, but just what they should be; I send them, not for the poetry, but the good sense and good will of them. I was beginning to transcribe; but Emma is sadly jealous of its getting into more hands, and I won't spoil it in her eyes by divulging it. Come to Enfield, and read it. As my poor cousin, the bookbinder, now with God, told me most sentimentally, that having purchased a picture of fish at a dead man's sale, his heart ached to see how the widow grieved to part with it, being her dear husband's favourite; and he almost apologised for his generosity by saying he could not help telling the widow she was "welcome to come and look at it"-e.g. at his house-"as often as she pleased." There was the germ of generosity in an uneducated mind. He had just reading enough from the backs of books for the " nec sinit esse feros"; had he read inside, the same impulse would have led him to give back the two-guinea thing-with a request to see it, now and then, at her house. We are parroted into delicacy.--Thus you have a tale for a Sonnet.

Adieu! with (imagine both) our loves.

To H. DODWELL.

C. L.

LETTER CCCXI.]

October 7, 1827.

Let us meet if possible when you hobble to town. Enfield Chase, nearly opposite to the 1st chapel; or

better to define it, east side opposite a white House in which a Mrs. Vaughan (in ill health) still resides.

My dear Dodwell-Your little pig found his way to Enfield this morning without his feet, or rather his little feet came first, and as I guessed the rest of him soon followed. He is quite a beauty. It was a pity to kill him, or rather, as Rice would say, it would have been a pity not to kill him, in his state of innocence. He might

have lived to be corrupted by the ways of the world, and for all his delicate promise have turned out, like an old Tea Broker you and I remember, a lump of fat rusty Bacon. Bacon was a Beast, my friend at Calne, Marsh, used to say or was it Bendry? A rasher of the latter still hangs up in Leadenhall. Your kind letter has left a relish upon my taste; it read warm and short as to-morrow's crackling.

I am not quite so comfortable at home yet as I should be else in the neatest compactest house I ever got -a perfect God-send; but for some weeks I must enjoy it alone. She always comes round again. It is a house of a few years' standing, built (for its size with every convenience) by an old humourist for himself, which he tired of as soon as he got warm in it. Grates, locks, a pump, convenience indescribable, and cheap as if it had been old and craved repairs. For me, who always take the first thing that offers, how lucky that the best should first offer itself! My books, my prints are up, and I seem (so like this room I write in is to a room there) to have come here transported in the night, like Gulliver in his flying house; and to add to the deception, the New River has come down from Islington with me. 'Twas what I wished to move my house, and I have realised it. Only instead of company seven nights in the week, I see my friends on the First Day of it, and enjoy six real Sabbaths. The Museum is a loss, but I am not so far but I can visit it occasionally: and I have exhausted the Plays there.

"Indisputably I shall allow no sage and onion to be cramm'd into the throat of so tender a suckling.