of Hervey, and of Alaric Watts? Is the muse of L. E. L. silent? Did you see a sonnet of mine in Blackwood's last? Curious construction! Elaborata facilitas! And now I'll tell. 'Twas written for the Gem, but the editors declined it, on the plea that it would shock all mothers; so they published the "Widow," instead. I am born out of time. I have no conjecture about what the present world calls delicacy. I thought Rosamund Gray was a pretty modest thing. Hessey assures me that the world would not bear it. I have lived to grow into an indecent character. When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, "Damn the age! I will write for Antiquity." Erratum in Sonnet :-Last line but something, for "tender," read tend. The Scotch do not know our law terms; but I find some remains of honest, plain, old writing lurking there still. They were not so mealy-mouthed to refuse my verses. Maybe 'tis their oatmeal. Blackwood sent me £20 for the drama. Somebody cheated me out of it next day; and my new pair of breeches, just sent home, cracking at first putting on, I exclaimed, in my wrath, "All tailors are cheats, and all men are tailors." Then I was better. C. L. To THOMAS HOOD. LETTER CCCXXXVII.] Enfield [1829.] Dear Lamb-You are an impudent varlet; but I will keep your secret. We dine at Ayrton's on Thursday, and shall try to find Sarah and her two spare beds for that night only. Miss M. and her so may not you and your rib. Yours, tragedy may be dished: Health attend you. Miss Bridget Hood sends love. T. HOOD, ESQ. To B. W. PROCTER. LETTER CCCXXXVIII.] "A January 29, 1829. When Miss Ouldcroft (who is now Mrs. Beddome, and Bed-dom'd to her) was at Enfield, which she was in Summer time, and owed her health to its suns and genial influences, she visited (with young ladylike impertinence) a poor man's cottage that had a pretty baby (0 the yearnling!) gave it fine caps and sweetmeats. On a day, broke into the parlour our two maids uproarious. "O ma'am, who do you think Miss Ouldcroft (they pronounce it Holcroft) has been working a cap for?" child," answered Mary, in true Shandean female simplicity. ""Tis the man's child as was taken up for sheep-stealing." Miss Ouldcroft was staggered, and would have cut the connexion, but by main force I made her go and take her leave of her protégée. I thought, if she went no more, the Abactor or the Abactor's wife (vide Ainsworth) would suppose she had heard something, and I have delicacy for a sheep-stealer. The overseers actually overhauled a mutton pie at the Baker's (his first, last, and only hope of mutton pie,) which he never came to eat, and thence inferred his guilt. Per occasionem cujus, I framed the sonnet; observe its elaborate construction. I was four days about it. THE GYPSY'S MALISON "Suck, baby, suck! mother's love grows by giving, Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting; Kiss, baby, kiss! Mother's lips shine by kisses, So sang a wither'd Sybil energetical, And bann'd the ungiving door with lips prophetical. Barry, study that sonnet. It is curiously and perversely elaborate. 'Tis a choking subject, and therefore the reader is directed to the structure of it. See you? and was this a fourteener to be rejected by a trumpery annual? Forsooth, 'twould shock all mothers; and may all mothers, who would so be shocked, bed-domd! as if mothers were such sort of logicians as to infer the future hanging of their child from the theoretical hangibility (or capacity of being hanged, if the judge pleases) of every infant born with a neck on. Oh B. C.! my whole heart is faint, and my whole head is sick (how is it?) at this damn'd canting unmasculine age! LETTER CCCXXXIX.] [1829.] The comings in of an incipient conveyancer are not adequate to the receipt of three twopenny post nonpaids in a week. Therefore, after this, I condemn my stub to long and deep silence, or shall awaken it to write to Lords. Lest those raptures in this honeymoon of my correspondence, which you avow for the gentle person of my Nuncio, after passing through certain natural grades, as Love, Love and Water, Love with the chill off, then subsiding to that point which the Heroic Suitor of his wedded dame, the noble-spirited Lord Randolph in the Play, declares to be the ambition of his passion, a reciprocation of "complacent kindness," should suddenly plump down (scarce staying to bait at the mid point of indifference, so hungry it is for distaste) to a loathing and blank aversion, to the rendering probable such counter expressions as this,-"Damn that infernal twopenny postman" (words which make the not yet glutted inamorato "lift up his hands and wonder who can use them.") While, then, you are not ruined, let me assure thee, O thou above the Painter, and next only under Giraldus Cambrensis, the most immortal and worthy to be immortal Barry, thy most ingenious and golden cadences do take my fancy mightily. They are at this identical moment under the snip and the paste of the fairest hands (bating chilblains) in Cambridge, soon to be transplanted to Suffolk, to the envy of half of the young ladies in Bury. But tell me, and tell me truly, gentle Swain, is that Isola Bella a true spot in geographical denomination, or a floating Delos in thy brain? Lurks that fair island in verity in the bosom of Lake Maggiore, or some other with less poetic name, which thou hast Cornwallised for the occasion? And what if Maggiore itself be but a coinage of adaptation? Of this, pray resolve me immediately, for my Albumess will be catechised on this subject; and how can I prompt her? Lake Leman, I know, and Lemon Lake (in a Punch Bowl) I have swun in, though those Lymphs be long since dry. But Maggiore may be in the moon. Unsphinx this riddle for me, for my shelves have no Gazetteer. And mayest thou never murder thy father-in-law in the Trivia of Lincoln's Inn New Square Passage, nor afterwards make absurd proposals to the Widow M[ontagu]. But I know you abhor any such notions. Nevertheless so did O-Edipus (as Admiral Burney used to call him, splitting the diphthong in spite or ignorance) for that matter. C. L. LETTER CCCXL.] February 2, 1829. Facundissime Poeta! quanquam istiusmodi epitheta oratoribus potiùs quam poetis attinere facilè scio—tamen, facundissime! Commoratur nobiscum jamdiu, in agro Enfeldiense, scilicet, leguleius futurus, illustrissimus Martinus Burneius otium agens, negotia nominalia, et officinam clientum vacuam, paululum fugiens. Orat, implorat te-nempe, Martinus ut si (quôd Dii faciant) fortè fortunâ, absente ipso, advenerit tardus cliens, eum certiorem feceris per literas hûc missas. Intelligisue? an me Anglicè et barbarice ad te hominem perdoctum scribere oportet? C. Agnus. Si status de franco tenemento datur avo, et in eodem facto si mediate vel immediate datur hæredibus vel hæredibus corporis dicti avi, postrema hæc verba sunt Limitationis non Perquisitionis. Dixi. CARLAGNULUS. To COWDEN CLARKE. LETTER CCCXLI.] Edmonton, February 2, 1829. Dear Cowden-Your books are as the gushing of streams in a desert. By the way, you have sent no autobiographies. Your letter seems to imply you had. Nor do I want any. Cowden, they are of the books which I give away. What damu'd Unitarian skewer-soul'd things the general biographies turn out! "Rank and Talent" you shall have when Mrs. May has done with 'em. Mary likes Mrs. Bedinfield much. For me, I read nothing but Astrea -it has turn'd my brain-I go about with a switch turn'd up at the end for a crook; and Lambs being too old, the butcher tells me, my cat follows me in a green ribband. Becky and her cousin are getting pastoral dresses, and then we shall all four go about Arcadising. O cruel Shepherdess! Inconstant, yet fair, and more inconstant for being fair! Her gold ringlets fell in a disorder superior to order! Come and join us. I am called the Black Shepherd-you shall be Cowden with the Tuft. Prosaically, we shall be glad to have you both- -or any two of you-drop in by surprise some Saturday night. This must go off. Loves to Vittoria. C. L. To H. C. ROBINSON. Enfield, February 27, 1829. LETTER CCCXLII.] Dear R.-Expectation was alert on the receipt of your strange-shaped present, while yet undisclosed from |