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from me; you shall have one. This I cannot mingle up with any nonsense which you usually tolerate from C. Lamb. Need he add loves to wife, sister, and all? Poor Mary is ill again, after a short lucid interval of four or five months. In short, I may call her half dead to me. Good you are to me. Yours with fervour of friendship,

for ever.

C. L.

If you want references, the Bishop of Carlisle may be one. Louisa's sister (as good as she, she cannot be better, though she tries,) educated the daughters of the late Earl of Carnarvon, and he settled a handsome annuity on her for life. In short, all the family are a sound rock.

To THOMAS MANNING.

LETTER CCCCXI.] May 10, 1834. You made me feel so funny, so happy-like; it was as if I was reading one of your old letters taken out at hazard any time between the last twenty years, 'twas so the same. The unity of place, a garden! The old Dramatis Personæ, a landlady and Daughter. The puns the same in mould. Will nothing change you? 'Tis but a short week since honest Ryle and I were lamenting the gone-by days of Manning and Whist. How savourily did he remember them! Might some great year but bring them back again! This was my exclaim, and R. did not ask for an explanation. I have had a scurvy nine years of it, and am now in the sorry fifth act. Twenty weeks nigh has she been now violent, with but a few sound months before, and these in such dejection that her fever might seem a relief to it. I tried to bring her to town in the winter once or twice, but it failed. Tuthill led me to expect that this illness would lengthen with her years, and it has cruelly-with that new feature of despondency after. I am with her alone now in a proper house. She is, I hope, recovering. We play Picquet,

and it is like the old times awhile, then goes off. I struggle to town rarely, and then to see London, with little other motive-for what is left there hardly? The streets and shops entertaining ever, else I feel as in a desert, and get me home to my cave. Save that once a month I pass a day, a gleam in my life, with Cary at the Museum (He is the flower of clergymen) and breakfast next morning with Robinson. I look to this as a treat. It sustains me. C. is a dear fellow, with but two vices, which in any less good than himself would be crimes past redemption. He has no relish for Parson Adams-hints that he might not be a very great Greek scholar after all (does Fielding hint that he was a Porson ?)—and prefers "Ye shepherds so cheerful and gay," and "My banks they are furnished with bees," to "The Schockmistress." I have not seen Wright's, but the faithfulness of C., Mary and I can attest. For last year, in a good interval, I giving some lessons to Emma, now Mrs. Moxon, in the sense part of her Italian (I knew no words), Mary pertinaciously undertook, being 69, to reɛd the Inferno all thro' with the help of his Translation, and we got thro' it with Dictionaries and Grammars, of course to our satisfaction. Her perseverance was gigantic, almost painful. Her head was over her task, like a sucking bee, morn to night. We were beginning the Purgatory, but got on less rapidly, our great authority for grammar, Emma, being fled, but should have proIceeded but for this misfortune. Do not come to town without apprising me. We must all three meet somehow and “drink a cup.”

Yours,

C. I.

Mary strives and struggles to be content when she is well. Last year when we talked of being dull (we had just lost our seven-years - nearly inmate), and Cary's invitation came, she said, "Did not I say something or other would turn up?" In her first walk out of the house, she would read every Auction advertisement along

"These

the road, and when I would stop her she said, are my Play-bills." She felt glad to get into the world again, but then follows lowness. She is getting about tho', I very much hope. She is rising, and will claim her morning Picquet. I go to put this in the Post first. I walk 9 or 10 miles a day, alway up the road, dear London-wards. Fields, flowers, birds, and green lanes, I have no heart for. The bare road is cheerful, and almost good as a street. I saunter to the Red Lion duly, as

you used to the Peacock.

T. Manning, Esq.,

Puckeridge, Herts.

TO REV. JAMES GILLMAN.

LETTER CCCCXII.]

Mr. Walden's, Church Street,
Edmonton, August 5, 1834.

My dear Sir-The sad week being over, I must write to you to say that I was glad of being spared from attending; I have no words to express my feeling with you all. I can only say that when you think a short visit from me would be acceptable, when your father and mother shall be able to see me with comfort, I will come to the bereaved house. Express to them my tenderest regards and hopes that they will continue our friends still. We both love and respect them as much as a human being can, and finally thank them with our hearts for what they have been to the poor departed.

God bless you all,

C. LAMB.

TO REV. H. F. CARY.

LETTER CCCCXIII.]

September 12, 1834.

"By Cot's plessing we will not be absence at the

grace."

Dear C.-We long to see you, and hear account of your peregrinations, of the Tun at Heidelburg, the Clock at Strasburg, the statue at Rotterdam, the dainty Rhenish, and poignant Moselle wines, Westphalian hams, and Botargoes of Altona. But perhaps you have seen, not

tasted any of these things.

Yours, very glad to chain you back again to your proper centre, books and Bibliothecæ,

C. and M. LAMB.

I have only got your note just now per negligentiam

periniqui Moxoni.

LETTER CCCCXIV.]

To MR. CHILDS.

Monday. Church Street, Edmonton (not Enfield, as you erroneously direct yours.) [September 15, 1834.]

Dear Sir-The volume which you seem to want is not to be had for love or money. I with difficulty procured a copy for myself. Yours is gone to enlighten the tawny Hindoos. What a supreme felicity to the author (only he is no traveller) on the Ganges or Hydaspes (Indian streams) to meet a smutty Gentoo ready to burst with laughing at the tale of Bo-Bo! for doubtless it hath been translated into all the dialects of the East. I grieve the less, that Europe should want it. I cannot gather from your letter whether you are aware that a second series of the Essays is published by Moxon, in Dover Street, Piccadilly, called "The Last Essays of Elia," and, I am told, is not inferior to the former. for you and will you accept it? the same time, my sole copy of the return it) for a month or two? favour me with the loan of one of those Norfolk-bred grunters that you laud so highly; I promise not to keep it above a day. What a funny name Bungay is! I never dreamt of a correspondent thence. I used to think of it

Shall I order a copy

Shall I lend you, at former volume (Oh! In return, you shall

as some Utopian town, or borough in Gotham land. I now believe in its existence, as part of Merry England! [Here are some lines scratched out.]

The part I have scratched out is the best of the letter. Let me have your commands.

CH. LAMB, alias ELIA.

TO REV. H. F. CARY.

LETTER CCCCXV.]

[October 1834.

I protest I know not in what words to invest my sense of the shameful violation of hospitality which I was guilty of on that fatal Wednesday. Let it be blotted from the calendar. Had it been committed at a layman's house, say a merchant's or manufacturer's, a cheesemonger's or greengrocer's, or, to go higher, a barrister's, a member of Parliament's, a rich banker's, I should have felt alleviation, a drop of self-pity. But to be seen deliberately to go out of the house of a clergyman drunk! a clergyman of the Church of England too! not that alone, but of an expounder of that dark Italian Hierophant, an exposition little short of his who dared unfold the Apocalypse: divine riddles both; and, without supernal grace vouchsafed, Arks not to be fingered without present blasting to the touchers. And then, from what house! Not a common glebe or vicarage (which yet had been shameful), but from a kingly repository of sciences, human and divine, with the primate of England for its guardian, arrayed in public majesty, from which the profane vulgar are bid fly. Could all those volumes have taught me nothing better! With feverish eyes on the succeeding dawn I opened upon the faint light, enough to distinguish, in a strange chamber, not immediately to be recognised, garters, hose, waistcoat, neckerchief, arranged in dreadful order and proportion, which I knew was not mine own. 'Tis the common symptom on awaking, I judge my last night's condition from. A tolerable scatter

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