Paradise, alias the Incurable ward of Westminster Hospital. I have seen her sitting in most superb state, surrounded by her seven incurable companions. They call each other ladies; nurse looks as if she would be considered as the first lady in the ward; only one seemed at all likely to rival her in dignity. "A man in the India House has resigned, by which Charles will get twenty-pounds a year, and White has prevailed on him to write some more lottery puffs; if that ends in smoke the twenty pounds is a sure card, and has made us very joyful. 66 'I continue very well, and return you very sincere thanks for my good health and improved looks, which have almost made Mrs. die with envy. She longs to come to Winterslow as much as the spiteful elder sister did to go to the well for a gift to spit diamonds. "Jane and I have agreed to boil a round of beef for your suppers when you come to town again. She (Jane) broke two of the Hogarth glasses, while we were away, whereat I made a great noise. Farewell. Love to William, and Charles's love and good wishes for the speedy arrival of the Life of Holcroft,' and the bearer thereof. "Yours, most affectionately, "Tuesday." "Charles told Mrs. "M. LAMB. Hazlitt had found a well in his garden, which, water being scarce in your county, would bring him in two-hundred a year; and she came, in great haste, the next morning, to ask me if it were true. Your brother and sister are quite well." 66 The country excursions, with which Lamb sometimes occupied his weeks of vacation, were taken with fear and trembling-often foregone-and finally given up, in consequence of the sad effects which the excitements of travel and change produced in his beloved companion. The following refers to one of these disasters :— well (I was very mean my sister. She got home very ill on the journey) and continued so till Monday night, when her complaint came on, and she is now absent from home. 66 I am glad to hear you are all well. I think I shall be mad if I take any more journeys with two experiences against it. I find all well here. Kind remembrances to Sarah,-have just got her letter. 66 H. Robinson has been to Blenheim, he says you will be sorry to hear that we should not have asked for the Titian Gallery there. One of his friends knew of it, and asked to see it. It is never shown but to those who inquire for it. "The pictures are all Titians, Jupiter and Ledas, Mars and Venuses, &c., all naked pictures, which may be a reason they don't show it to females. But he says they are very fine; and perhaps it is shown separately to put another fee into the shower's pocket. Well, I shall never see it. "I have lost all wish for sights. God bless you. I shall be glad to see you in London. 66 Thursday. "Yours truly, 66 C. LAMB." Mr. Wordsworth's Essay on Epitaphs, afterwards appended to "The Excursion," produced the following "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? 66 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, that 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, levelling 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, 'Honour thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long in the land,' &c. Sincerely wishing your children long life to honour, &c. "I remain, "C. LAMB." CHAPTER VI. LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, ETC., CHIEFLY RESPECTING 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 "The Excursion," (in the quarto form, marked by the bitter flippancy of Lord Byron); and by the publication, in 1815, of two volumes of Poems, some of which only were new. 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 following letter is in acknowledgment of an early copy of "The Excursion." 66 "1814. 'I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receipt of the great armful of poetry which you have sent me; and to get it before the rest of the world too! L |