the Doctor, as he thought, sent it me. A the persuasive of my own, which accompanies

it, will not be thrown away; if it be, he is a sloe, and no true-hearted crab, and there's an end. For that life of the German conjuror which you speak of, 'Colerus de Vitâ Doctoris vix-Intelligibilis,' I perfectly remember the last evening we spent with

street,-(by that token we had raw rabbits for supper, and Miss B. prevailed upon me to take a glass of brandy and water after supper, which is not my habit,)—I perfectly remember reading portions of that life in their parlour, and I think it must be among their packages. It was the very last evening we were at that house. What is gone of that frank-hearted circle, Morgan, and his cos-lettuces? He ate walnuts better than any man I ever knew. Friendships in these parts stagnate.

book of like exterior he did send, but being disclosed, how far unlike! It was the 'Wellbred Scholar,'-a book with which it seems the Doctor laudably fills up those hours which he can steal from his medical avocations. Chesterfield, Blair, Beattie, portions from 'The Life of Savage,' make up a Mrs. Morgan and Miss Brent, in Londonprettyish system of morality and the belleslettres, which Mr. Mylne, a schoolmaster, has properly brought together, and calls the collection by the denomination above mentioned. The Doctor had no sooner discovered his error, than he dispatched man and horse to rectify the mistake, and with a pretty kind of ingenuous modesty in his note, seemeth to deny any knowledge of the 'Well-bred Scholar;' false modesty surely, and a blush misplaced; for, what more pleasing than the consideration of professional austerity thus relaxing, thus improving! But so, when a child I remember blushing, being caught on my knees to my Maker, or doing otherwise some pious and praiseworthy action; now I rather love such things to be seen. Henry Crabb Robinson is out upon his circuit, and his books are inaccessible without his leave and key. He is attending the Norfolk Circuit,-a short term, but to him, as to many young lawyers, a long vacation, sufficiently dreary.* I thought I could do no better than transmit to him, not extracts, but your very letter itself, than which I think I never read any thing more moving, more pathetic, or more conducive to the purpose of persuasion. The in Egypt. Whatever thou hast been told to

Crab is a sour Crab if it does not sweeten him. I think it would draw another third volume of Dodsley out of me; but you say you don't want any English books? Perhaps after all, that's as well; one's romantic credulity is for ever misleading one into misplaced acts of foolery. Crab might have answered by this time: his juices take a long time supplying, but they'll run at last, -I know they will,-pure golden pippin. A fearful rumour has since reached me that the Crab is on the eve of setting out for France. If he is in England your letter will reach him, and I flatter myself a touch of

"I am going to eat turbot, turtle, venison, marrow pudding,-cold punch, claret, Madeira, at our annual feast, at half-past four this day. They keep bothering me, (I'm at office,) and my ideas are confused. Let me know if I can be of any service as to books. God forbid the Architectonican should be sacrificed to a foolish scruple of some bookproprietor, as if books did not belong with the highest propriety to those that understand 'em best. "C. LAMB."

TO MR. COLERIDGE.

"26th August, 1814. "Let the hungry soul rejoice, there is corn

the contrary by designing friends, who perhaps inquired carelessly, or did not inquire at all, in hope of saving their money, there is a stock of 'Remorse' on hand, enough, as Pople conjectures, for seven years' consumption; judging from experience of the last two years. Methinks it makes for the benefit of sound literature, that the best books do not always go off best. Inquire in seven years' time for the 'Rokebys' and the 'Laras,' and where shall they be found?— fluttering fragmentally in some thread-paper -whereas thy 'Wallenstein,' and thy 'Remorse,' are safe on Longman's or Pople's shelves, as in some Bodleian; there they shall remain; no need of a chain to hold them fast-perhaps for ages-tall copiesand people shan't run about hunting for

them as in old Ezra's shrievalty they did for a Bible, almost without effect till the greatgreat-grand-niece (by the mother's side) of Jeremiah or Ezekiel (which was it?) remembered something of a book, with odd reading in it, that used to lie in the green closet in her aunt Judith's bedchamber.

"Thy caterer, Price, was at Hamburgh when last Pople heard of him, laying up for thee like some miserly old father for his generous hearted son to squander.

"Mr. Charles Aders, whose books also pant for that free circulation which thy custody is sure to give them, is to be heard of at his kinsmen, Messrs. Jameson and Aders, No. 7, Laurence Pountney-lane, London, according to the information which Crabius with his parting breath left me. Crabius is gone to Paris. I prophesy he and the Parisians will part with mutual contempt. His head has a twist Allemagne, like thine, dear mystic.

want any books that I can procure for you? Old Jimmy Boyer is dead at last. Trollope has got his living, worth 1000l. a-year net. See, thou sluggard, thou heretic-sluggard, what mightest thou not have arrived at. Lay thy animosity against Jimmy in the grave. Do not entail it on thy posterity.

"CHARLES LAMB."

CHAPTER X.

[1815 to 1817.]

LETTERS TO WORDSWORTH, SOUTHEY, AND MANNING.

It was at the beginning of the year 1815 that I had first the happiness of a personal acquaintance with Mr. Lamb. With his scattered essays and poems I had become familiar a few weeks before, through the "I have been reading Madame Stael on instrumentality of Mr. Baron Field, now Germany. An impudent clever woman. Chief Justice of Gibraltar, who had been But if 'Faust' be no better than in her brought into close intimacy with Lamb by abstract of it, I counsel thee to let it alone. the association of his own family with How canst thou translate the language of Christ's Hospital, of which his father was cat-monkeys? Fie on such fantasies! But the surgeon, and by his own participation in I will not forget to look for Proclus. It is a the "Reflector." Living then in chambers in kind of book when one meets with it one Inner Temple-lane, and attending those of shuts the lid faster than one opened it. Yet Mr. Chitty, the special pleader, which were I have some bastard kind of recollection that on the next staircase to Mr. Lamb's, I had some where, some time ago, upon some stall been possessed some time by a desire to or other, I saw it. It was either that or become acquainted with the writings of my Plotinus, or Saint Augustine's 'City of God.' gifted neighbour, which my friend was able So little do some folks value, what to others, only partially to gratify. "John Woodvil,” sc. to you, 'well used,' had been the 'Pledge and the number of the "Reflector" enriched of Immortality.' Bishop Bruno I never with Lamb's article, he indeed lent me, but touched upon. Stuffing too good for the he had no copy of " Rosamund Gray," which brains of such 'a Hare' as thou describest. I was most anxious to read, and which, after May it burst his pericranium, as the gobbets earnest search through all the bookstalls of fat and turpentine (a nasty thought of the within the scope of my walks, I found, exseer) did that old dragon in the Apocrypha ! hibiting proper marks of due appreciation, May he go mad in trying to understand his in the store of a little circulating library author! May he lend the third volume of near Holborn. There was something in this him before he has quite translated the second, little romance so entirely new, yet breathing to a friend who shall lose it, and so spoil the the air of old acquaintance; a sense of publication, and may his friend find it and beauty so delicate and so intense; and a send it him just as thou or some such less morality so benignant and so profound, that, dilatory spirit shall have announced the as I read it, my curiosity to see its author whole for the press; lastly, may he be hunted rose almost to the height of pain. The by Reviewers, and the devil jug him. Canst commencement of the new year brought think of any other queries in the solution of me that gratification; I was invited to meet which I can give thee satisfaction? Do you Lamb at dinner, at the house of Mr. William

Evans, a gentleman holding an office in the India House, who then lived in Weymouth-street, and who was a proprietor of the "Pamphleteer," to which I had contributed some idle scribblings. My duties at the office did not allow me to avail myself of this invitation to dinner, but I went up at ten o'clock, through a deep snow, palpably congealing into ice, and was amply repaid when I reached the hospitable abode of my friend. There was Lamb, preparing to depart, but he staid half an hour in kindness to me, and then accompanied me to our common home-the Temple.

Lamb insisted on my sitting with him while he smoked "one pipe "-for, alas! for poor human nature-he had resumed his acquaintance with his "fair traitress." How often the pipe and the glasses were replenished, I will not undertake to disclose; but I can never forget the conversation: though the first, it was more solemn, and in higher mood, than any I ever after had with Lamb through the whole of our friendship. How it took such a turn between two strangers, one of them a lad of not quite twenty, I cannot tell; but so it happened. We discoursed then of life and death, and our anticipation of a world beyond the grave. Lamb spoke of these awful themes with the simplest piety, but expressed his own fond cleavings to life-to all well-known accustomed things

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and a shivering (not shuddering) sense of that which is to come, which he so finely indicated in his "New Year's Eve," years afterwards. It was two o'clock before we parted, when Lamb gave me a hearty invitation to renew my visit at pleasure; but two or three months elapsed before I saw him again. In the meantime, a number of the Pamphleteer" contained an Essay on the Chief Living Poets," among whom on the title appeared the name of Lamb, and some page or two were expressly devoted to his praises. It was a poor tissue of tawdry eulogies-a shallow outpouring of young enthusiasm in fine words, which it mistakes for thoughts; yet it gave Lamb, who had hitherto received scarcely civil notice from reviewers, great pleasure to find that any one

Methinks I see him before me now, as he appeared then, and as he continued, with scarcely any perceptible alteration to me, during the twenty years of intimacy which followed, and were closed by his death. A light frame, so fragile that it seemed as if a breath would overthrow it, clad in clerk-like black, was surmounted by a head of form and expression the most noble and sweet. His black hair curled crisply about an expanded forehead; his eyes, softly brown, twinkled with varying expression, though the prevalent feeling was sad; and the nose slightly curved, and delicately carved at the nostril, with the lower outline of the face regularly oval, completed a head which was finely placed on the shoulders, and gave importance, and even dignity, to a diminutive and shadowy stem. Who shall describe his countenance-catch its quivering sweetness -and fix it for ever in words? There are none, alas! to answer the vain desire of friendship. Deep thought, striving with recognised him as having a place among humour; the lines of suffering wreathed into cordial mirth; and a smile of painful sweetness, present an image to the mind it can as little describe as lose. His personal appearance and manner are not unfitly characterised by what he himself says in one of his letters to Manning of Braham-" a compound of the Jew, the gentleman, and the angel." He took my arm, and we walked to the Temple, Lamb stammering out fine remarks as we walked ; and when we reached his staircase, he detained me with an urgency which would not be denied, and we mounted to the top story, where an old petted servant, called Becky, was ready to receive us. We were soon seated beside a cheerful fire; hot water Wordsworth, after his return to Westmoreand its better adjuncts were before us; and land from this visit :

poets. The next time I saw him, he came almost breathless into the office, and proposed to give me what I should have chosen as the greatest of all possible honours and delights-an introduction to Wordsworth, who I learned, with a palpitating heart, was actually at the next door. I hurried out with my kind conductor, and a minute after was presented by Lamb to the person whom in all the world I venerated most, with this preface:- "Wordsworth, give me leave to introduce to you my only admirer."

The following letter was addressed to