SKETCHES AND LETTERS: BEING THE FINAL MEMORIALS OF CHARLES LAMB, NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED. BY THOMAS NOON TALFOURD, ONE OF HIS EXECUTORS. SECOND EDITION. NEW-YORK: ►D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 200 BROADWAY. PHILADELPHIA: GEO. S. APPLETON, 164 CHESNUT-STREET. MDCCCXLIX. ΤΟ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, Esq., D. C. L., POET LAUREATE, THESE FINAL MEMORIALS OF ONE WHO CHERISHED HIS FRIENDSHIP AS A COMFORT AMIDST GRIEFS, AND A GLORY AMIDST DEPRESSIONS, ARE, WITH AFFECTION AND RESPECT, INSCRIBED BY ONE WHOSE PRIDE IS TO HAVE BEEN IN OLD TIME HIS EARNEST ADMIRER, AND ONE OF WHOSE FONDEST WISHES IS THAT HE MAY BE LONG SPARED TO ENJOY FAME, RARELY ACCORDED TO THE LIVING. PREFACE. NEARLY twelve years have elapsed since the Letters of Charles Lamb, accompanied by such slight sketches of his Life as might link them together, and explain the circumstances to which they refer, were given to the world. In the Preface to that work, reference was made to letters yet remaining unpublished, and to a period when a more complete estimate might be formed of the singular and delightful character of the writer than was there presented. That period has arrived. Several of his friends, who might possibly have felt a moment's pain at the publication of some of those effusions of kindness, in which they are sportively mentioned, have been removed by death; and the dismissal of the last, and to him the dearest of all, his sister, while it has brought to her the repose she sighed for ever since she lost him, has released his biographer from a difficulty which has hitherto prevented a due appreciation of some of his noblest qualities. Her most lamentable, but most innocent agency in the event which consigned her for life to his protection, forbade the introduction of any letter, or allusion to any incident, which might ever, in the long and dismal twilight of consciousness which she endured, shock her by the recurrence of long past and terrible sorrows; and the same consideration for her induced the suppression of every passage which referred to the malady with which she was |