when lo! we found at the moment the scissors were going to work that a part of the poem was printed at the back of every picture. What a cruel disappointment! To conclude this long story about nothing, the poor, despised garret is now called the print room, and is become our most favorite sitting-room. The lions still live in Exeter Change. Returning home through the Strand, I often hear them roar about twelve o'clock at night. I never hear them without thinking of you, because you seemed so pleased with the sight of them, and said your young companions would stare when you told them you had seen a lion. And now, my dear Barbara, farewell; I have not written such a long letter a long time, but I am very I had nothing amusing to write about. . . .

sorry

CHARLES LAMB TO MISS HUTCHINSON.

LONDON, October 19, 1815.

I am forced to be the replier to your letter, for Mary has been ill, and gone from home these five weeks yesterday. . . . I don't know but the recurrence of these illnesses might help me to sustain her death better than if we had had no partial separations. But I won't talk of

death. I will imagine us immortal, or forget that we are otherwise. By God's blessing, in a few weeks we may be making our meal together, or sitting in the front row of the pit at Drury Lane, or taking our evening walk past the theatres, to look at the outside of them, at least, if not to be tempted in. Then we forget we are assailable; we are strong for the time as rocks," the wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs."

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

1815.

I wish you would write more criticism about Spenser, etc. I think I could say something about him myself, but, Lord bless me! these "merchants and their spicy drugs," which are so harmonious to sing of, they lime-twig up my poor soul and body, till I shall forget I ever thought myself a bit of a genius! I can't even put a few thoughts on paper for a newspaper. I engross when I should pen a paragraph. Confusion blast all mercantile transactions, all traffic, exchange of commodities, intercourse between nations, all the consequent civilization and wealth, and amity, and link of society,

and getting rid of prejudices, and getting a knowledge of the face of the globe; and rot the very firs of the forest that look so romantic alive, and die into desks!

Vale.

CHARLES LAMB TO MISS MATILDA BETHAM.

LONDON, June 1, 1816.

All this while I have been tormenting myself with the thought of having been ungracious to you, and you have been all the while accusing yourself. Let us absolve one another, and be quiet. My head is in such a state from incapacity for business that I certainly know it to be my duty not to undertake the veriest trifle. in addition. I hardly know how I can go on. I have tried to get some redress by explaining my health, but with no great success. No one can tell how ill I am because it does not come out to the exterior of my face, but lies in my skull deep and invisible. I wish I was leprous, and black jaundiced skin-over, and that all was as well within as my cursed looks. You must not think me worse than I am. I am determined not to be over-set, but to give up business rather, and get 'em to allow me a trifle for services past. O that I had been a shoemaker

or a baker, or a man of large independent fortune! O darling laziness! heaven of Epicurus! Saint's Everlasting Rest! that I could drink vast potations of thee thro' all unmeasured eternity-Otium cum vel sine dignitate. Scandalous, dishonorable, any kind of repose. I stand not upon the dignified sort. Accursed, damned desks, commerce, business. Inventions of that

old original busybody, brain-working Satan— Sabbathless, restless Satan. A curse relieves; do you ever try it? . .

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON.

March 23, 1825.

I have had no impulse to write, or attend to any single object but myself for weeks pastmy single self, I by myself—I. I am sick of hope deferred. The grand wheel is in agitation, that is to turn up my fortune; but round it rolls, and will turn up nothing. I have a glimpse of freedom, of becoming a gentleman at large; but I am put off from day to day. I have offered my resignation, and it is neither accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept. in this fearful suspense. Guess what an absorbing stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the

existence of friends present or absent. The East India Directors alone can be that thing to me or not. I have just learned that nothing will be decided this week. Why the next? Why any week? It has fretted me into an itch of the fingers; I rub 'em against paper, and write to you, rather than not allay this scorbuta. . .

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

COLEBROOK COTTAGE, April 6, 1825.

I have been several times meditating a letter to you concerning the good thing which has befallen me; but the thought of poor Monkhouse came across me. He was one that I had exulted in the prospect of congratulating me. He and you were to have been the first participators; for indeed it has been ten weeks since the first motion of it. Here am I then, after thirty-three years' slavery, sitting in my own room at eleven o'clock this finest of all April mornings, a freed man, with £441 a year for the remainder of my life, live I as long as John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and starved at ninety: £441, i. e., £450, with a deduction of £9 for a provision secured to my sister, she