Mount take out a license, and St. Paul's Epistles not missible without a stamp. O that you may find means to go on! But alas! where is Sir G. Beaumont ?-Sotheby?

meaning seems to lie in it, none hover above it in the heights of allegory, none to lurk beneath it even in the depths of Cabala! This is the work of the Tempter; it is a cloud of darkness conjured up between the truth of the sacred letters and the eyes of his understanding, by the malice of the evil-one, and for a trial of his faith! Must he then at length confess, must he subscribe the name of LUTHER to an exposition which consecrates a weapon for the hand of the idolatrous Hierarchy ? Never!

Never!

"There still remains one auxiliary in reserve, the translation of the Seventy. The Alexandrine Greeks, anterior to the Church itself, could intend no support to its corruptions-the Septuagint will have profaned the Altar of Truth with no incense for the nostrils of the universal Bishop to snuff up. And here again his hopes are baffled! Exactly at this perplexed passage had the Greek translator given his understanding a holiday, and made his pen supply its place. O honored Luther! as easily mightest thou convert the whole City of Rome, with the Pope and the conclave of Cardinals inclusively, as strike a spark of light from the words, and nothing but words, of the Alexandrine version. Disappointed, despondent, enraged, ceasing to think, yet continuing his brain on the stretch in solicitation of a thought; and gradually giving himself up to angry fancies, to recollections of past persecutions, to uneasy fears, and inward defiances, and floating images of the Evil Being, their supposed personal author; he sinks, without perceiving it, into a trance of slumber; during which his brain retains its waking energies, excepting that what would have been mere thoughts before, now (the action and counterweight of his senses and of their impressions being withdrawn) shape and condense themselves into things, into realities! Repeatedly half-wakening, and his eyelids as often re-closing, the objects which really surround him form the place and scenery of his dream. All at once he sees the arch-fiend coming forth on the wall of the room, from the very spot, perhaps, on which his eyes had been fixed, vacantly, during the perplexed moments of his former meditation: the inkstand which he had at the same time been using, becomes associated with it and in that struggle of rage, which in these distempered dreams almost constantly precedes the helpless terror by the pain of

What is become of the rich Auditors in Albemarle Street? Your letter has saddened me.

I am so tired with my journey, being up all night, I have neither things nor words in my power. I believe I expressed my admiration of the pamphlet. Its power over me was like that which Milton's pamphlets must have had on his contemporaries, who were tuned to them. What a piece of prose! Do you hear if it is read at all? I am out of the world of readers. I hate all that do read, for they read nothing but reviews and new books. I gather myself up into the old things.

I have put up shelves. You never saw a book-case in more true harmony with the contents, than what I have nailed up in a room, which, though new, has more aptitudes for growing old than you shall often see-as one sometimes gets a friend in the middle of life, who becomes an old friend in a short time. My rooms are luxurious; one is for prints and one for books; a summer and a winter parlor. When shall I ever see you in them?

Mr. Wordsworth's Essay on Epitaphs, afterwards appended to "The Excursion," produced the following let

ter:

which we are finally awakened, he imagines that he hurls it at the in'truder, or not improbably in the first instant of awakening, while yet both his imagination and his eyes are possessed by the dream, he actually hurls it. Some weeks after, perhaps, during which interval he had often mused on the incident, undetermined whether to deem it a visitation of Satan to him in the body or out of the body, he discovers for the first time the dark spot on his wall, and receives it as a sign and pledge vouchsafed to him of the event having actually taken place."

DEAR W.,

TO MR. WORDSWORTH.

Friday, 19th Oct. 1810. E. I. Ho.

Mary has been very ill, which you have heard, I suppose, from the Montagues. She is very weak and low spirited now. I was much pleased with your continuation of the Essay on Epitaphs. It is the only sensible thing which has been written on that subject, and it goes to the bottom. In particular, I was pleased with your translation of that turgid epitaph into the plain feeling under it. It is perfectly a test. But what is the reason we have no good epitaphs after all?

A very striking instance of your position might be found in the churchyard of Ditton-upon-Thames, if you know such a place. Ditton-upon-Thames has been blessed by the residence of a poet, who, for love or money, I do not well know which, has dignified every grave-stone, for the last few years with bran-new verses, all different, and all ingenious, with the author's name at the bottom of each. This sweet Swan of Thames has artfully diversified his strains and his rhymes; the same thought never occurs twice; more justly, perhaps, as no thought ever occurs at all, there was a physical impossibility that the same thought should recur. It is long since I saw and read these inscriptions, but I remember the impression was of a smug usher at his desk in the intervals of instruction, leveling his pen. Of death, as it consists of dust and worms, and mourners and uncertainty, he had never thought; but the word "death" he had often seen separate and conjunct with other words, till he had learned to speak of all its attributes as glibly as Unitarian Belsham will discuss you the attributes of the word "God" in a pulpit ; and will talk of infinity with a tongue that dangles from a skull that never reached in thought and thorough

imagination two inches, or further than from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to the sounding-board of the pulpit.

But the epitaphs were trim, and sprag, and patent, and pleased the survivors of Thames Ditton above the old mumpsimus of "Afflictions Sore." . . . . To do justice though, it must be owned that even the excellent feeling which dictated this dirge when new, must have suffered something in passing through so many thousand applications, many of them no doubt quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington churchyard (I think) an Epitaph to an infant, who died "Etatis four months," with this seasonable inscription appended, "Honor thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long in the land," &c. children long life to honor, &c.

Sincerely wishing your

I remain,

C. LAMB.

CHAPTER VI.

LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, ETC., CHIEFLY RESPECTING WORDSWORTH'S POEMS ; 1815 TO 1818.

THE admirers of Wordsworth-few, but energetic and hopeful-were delighted, and his opponents excited to the expression of their utmost spleen, by the appearance, in 1814, of two volumes of poems, some new and some old, and subsequently of "The Excursion," in the quarto form, marked by the bitter flippancy of Lord Byron. The following letters are chiefly expressive of Lamb's feelings respecting these remarkable works, and the treatment which his own Review of the latter received from Mr. Gifford, then the Editor of the Quarterly Review, for which it was written. The first, however, to Mrs. Wordsworth's sister, who resided with the poet at Rydal, relates to matters of yet nearer interest.

TO MISS HUTCHINSON.

Thursday, 19th Oct. 1815.

DEAR MISS H.,

I am forced to be the replier to your letter, for Mary has been ill, and gone from home these five weeks yesterday. She has left me very lonely, and very miserable. I stroll about, but there is no rest but at one's own fireside, and there is no rest for me there now. I look forward to the worsehalf being past, and keep up as well as I can. She has begun to show some favorable symptoms. The return of her