TO MR. GILMAN.

Pray trust me with the "Church History," as well as the "Worthies." A moon shall restore both. Also give me back "Him of Aquinium." In return you have the light of my countenance.* A dieu.

P. S. A sister also of mine comes with it. A son of Nimshi drives her. Their driving will have been furious, impassioned. Pray God they have not toppled over the tunnel! I promise you I fear their steed, bred out of the wind without father, semi-Melchisedec-ish, hot, phaetontic. From my country lodgings at Enfield.

C. L.

DEAR GILMAN,

TO THE SAME.

Pray do you, or S. T. C., immediately write to say you have received back the golden works of the dear, fine, silly old angel, which I part from, bleeding, and to say how the winter has used you all.

* A sketch of Lamb, by an amateur artist.

It is our intention soon, weather permitting, to come over for a day at Highgate; for beds we will trust to the Gate-House, should you be full: tell me if we may come casually, for in this change of climate, there is no naming a day for walking. With best loves to Mrs. Gilman, &c.,

Yours mopish, but in health,

C. LAMB.

I shall be uneasy till I hear of Fuller's safe

arrival.

While Lamb was residing at Enfield, the friendship which, in 1824, he had formed with Mr. Moxon, led to very frequent intercourse, destined, in after years, to be rendered habitual, by the marriage of his friend with the young lady whom he regarded almost as a daughter. In 1828 Mr. Moxon, at the request of Mr. Hurst, of the firm of Hurst, Chance, and Co., applied to Lamb to supply an article for the "Keepsake," which he, always disliking the flimsy elegancies of the Annuals-sadly opposed to his own exclusive taste for old, standard, motheaten books ;-thus declined :—

MY DEAR M.

TO MR. MOXON.

It is my firm determination to have nothing to do with "Forget-me-Nots" - pray excuse me as civilly as you can to Mr. Hurst. I will take care to refuse any other applications. The things which Pickering has, if to be had again, I have promised absolutely, you know, to poor Hood, from whom I had a melancholy epistle yesterday ; besides that Emma has decided objections to her own and her friends' Album verses being published; but if she gets over that, they are decidedly Hood's. Till we meet, farewell. Loves to Dash.*

My friend Patmore, author of the "Months," a very pretty publication-of sundry Essays in the "London," "New Monthly," &c.,

*The great dog, which was, at one time, the constant companion of his long walks.

wants to dispose of a volume or two of "Tales." Perhaps they might chance to suit Hurst; but be that as it may, he will call upon you, under favour of my recommendation; and as he is returning to France, where he lives, if you can do anything for him in the Treaty line, to save him dancing over the Channel every week, I am sure you will. I said I'd never trouble you again; but how vain are the resolves of mortal man! P. is a very hearty friendly good fellow-and was poor John Scott's second,as I shall be yours when you want me. May you never be mine!

Yours truly,

C. L.

Enfield.

The following two letters, addressed to Mr. H. C. Robinson, when afflicted with rheumatism, are in Lamb's wildest strain of mirth. In the first, he pretends to endure all the pain he believes his friend to be suffering, and attributes it to his own incautious habits; in the second he attributes the suffering to his friend in a strain of exaggeration, probably intended to make the reality more tolerable by comparison :

TO MR. H. C. ROBINSON.

DEAR ROBINSON,

We are afraid you will slip from us from England without again seeing us. It would be charity to come and see one. I have these three days been laid up with strong rheumatic pains, in loins, back, shoulders. I shriek sometimes from the violence of them. I get scarce any sleep, and the consequence is, I am restless, and want to change sides as I lie, and I cannot turn without resting on my hands, and so turning all my body all at once, like a log with a lever. While this rainy weather lasts I have no hope of alleviation. I have tried flannels and embrocation in vain. Just at the hip joint the pangs are sometimes so excruciating, that I cry out. It is as violent as the cramp, and far more continuous. I am ashamed to whine about these complaints to you, who can ill enter into them; but indeed they are sharp. You go about, in rain or fine, at all hours, without discommodity. I envy you your immunity at a time of life not much removed from

my own. But you owe your exemption to temperance, which it