"It is too long to transcribe, but I hope to show it you some day, as I hope some time again to see you when all of us are well. Only it ends thus, 'We were nearly of an age (he was the elder); he was the only person in the world in whose eyes I always appeared young.'

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What a lesson does the following read to us from one who, while condemned to uninteresting industry, thought happiness consisted in an affluence of time!

TO BERNARD BARTON.

"Enfield Chace-side, Saturday, 25th July,

A. D. 1829, 11 A. M.

“There—a fuller, plumper, juicier date never dropped from Idumean palm. Am I in the date-ive case now? if not, a fig for dates, which is more than a date is worth. I never stood much affected to those limitary specialities. Least of all, since the date of my superannuation.

was.

What have I with time to do?

Slaves of desks, 'twas meant for you.

But town, with all my native hankering after it, is not what it The streets, the shops are left, but all old friends are gone. And in London I was frightfully convinced of this as I passed houses and places, empty caskets now. I have ceased to care almost about anybody. The bodies I cared for are in graves or dispersed. My old chums, that lived so long and flourished so steadily, are crumbled away. When I took leave of our adopted young friend at Charing Cross, 'twas a heavy unfeeling rain, and I had nowhere to go. Home have I none, and not a sympathizing house to turn to in the great city. Never did the waters of heaven pour down on a forlorner head. Yet I tried ten days at a sort of friend's house, but it was large and straggling—one of the individuals of my old long knot of friends, card-players, pleasant companions, that have tumbled to pieces, into dust and other things; and I got home on Thursday, convinced that it was better to get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in my corner. And to make me more alone, our ill-tempered maid is gone, who, with all her airs, was yet a home-piece of fur niture, a record of better days; and the young thing that has succeeded her is good and attentive, but she is nothing. And I have no one here to talk over old matters with. Scolding and quarrelling have something of familiarity and a community of interest; they imply acquaintance; they are of one sentiment, which is of the family of dearness.

"I can neither scold at nor quarrel at this insignificant im

plement of household services; she is less than a cat, and just better than a deal dresser. What I can do, and over-do, is to walk; but deadly long are the days, these summer allday-days, with but a half hour's candlelight, and no firelight. I do not write, tell your kind inquisitive Eliza, and can hardly read. "Tis cold work, authorship, without something to puff one into fashion. Could you not write something on Quakerism for Quakers to read, but nominally addressed to NonQuakers, explaining your dogmas, as waiting on the Spirit, by the analogy of human calmness, and waiting on the judg ment? I scarcely know what I mean, but to make Non-Quakers reconciled to your doctrines, by showing something like them in mere human operations; but I hardly understand myself, so let it pass for nothing. I assure you, no work is worse than over work. The mind preys on itself, the most unwholesome food. I bragged formerly that I could not have too much time. I have a surfeit; with few years to come, the days are wearisome. But weariness is not eternal. Something will shine out to take the load off that crushes me, which is at present intolerable. I have killed an hour or two in this Door scrawl. I am a sanguinary murderer of time, and would kill him inchmeal just now. But the snake is vital. Well, I shall write merrier anon. "Tis the present copy of my countenance I send, and to complain is a little to alleviate. May you enjoy yourself as far as the wicked world will let you, and think that you are not quite alone, as I am! Health to Lucia, and to Anna, and kind remembrances.

"Your forlorn

"C. L."

The cares of housekeeping pressed too heavily on Miss Lamb, and her brother resolved to resign the dignity of a housekeeper for the independence of a lodger. A couple of old dwellers in Enfield, hard by his cottage, had the good fortune to receive them. Lamb refers to the change in the following letter, acknowledging the receipt of Wilson's Life of De Foe,' in which a criticism from his pen was inserted, imbodying the sentiments which he had expressed some years before.

66

TO MR. WALTER WILSON.

"Enfield, 15th November, 1809. My dear Wilson-I have not opened a packet of unknown contents for many years that gave me so much pleasure as when I disclosed your three volumes. I have given them a careful perusal, and they have taken their degree of classical

books upon my shelves. De Foe was always my darling, but what darkness was I in as to far the larger part of his writings! I have now an epitome of them all. I think the way in which you have done the 'Life' the most judicious you could have pitched upon. You have made him tell his own story, and your comments are in keeping with the tale. Why, I never heard of such a work as 'the Review.' Strange that, in my stall-hunting days, I never so much as lit upon an odd volume of it. This circumstance looks as if they were never of any great circulation. But I may have met with 'em, and, not knowing the prize, overpassed 'em. I was almost a stranger to the whole history of Dissenters in those reigns, and picked my way through that strange book, the 'Consolidator,' at random. How affecting are some of his personal appeals: what a machine of projects he set on foot, and following writers have picked his pocket of the patents! I do not understand whereabouts in Roxana he himself left off. I always thought the complete-tourist-sort of description of the town she passes through on her last embarcation miserably unseasonable and out of place. I knew not they were spurious. Enlighten me as to where the apocryphal matter commences. I, by accident, can correct one A. D., ' Family Instructor,' vol. ii., 1718; you say his first volume had then reached the fourth edition; now I have a fifth, printed for Eman Matthews, 1717. So have I plucked one rotten date, or rather picked it up where it had inadvertently fallen, from your flourishing date-tree, the Palm of Engaddi. I may take it for my pains. I think yours a book which every public library must have, and every English scholar should have. I am sure it has enriched my meager stock of the author's works. I seem to be twice as opulent. Mary is by my side, just finishing the second volume. It must have interest to divert her away so long from her modern novels. Coleridge will be quite jealous. I was a little disappointed at my Öde to the Treadmill' not finding a place, but it came out of time. The two papers of mine will puzzle the reader, being so akin. Odd, that, never keeping a scrap of my own letters, with some fifteen years' interval, I should nearly have said the same things. But I shall always feel happy in having my name go down any how with De Foe's, and that of his historiographer. I promise myself, if not immortality, yet diuternity of being read in consequence. We have both had much illness this year, and feeling infirmities and fretfulness grow upon us: we have cast off the cares of housekeeping, sold off our goods, and commenced boarding and lodging with a very comfortable old couple next door to where you found us. We use a sort

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of common table. Nevertheless, we have reserved a private one for an old friend; and when Mrs. Wilson and you revisit Babylon, we shall pray you to make it yours for a season. Our very kindest remembrances to you both.

"From your old friend and fellow-journalist, now in two in

stances,

"C. LAMB.

"Hazlitt is going to make your book a basis for a review of De Foe's Novels in the Edinbro'. I wish I had health and spirits to do it. Hone I have not seen, but I doubt not he will be much pleased with your performance. I very much hope you will give us an account of Dunton, &c. But what I should more like to see would be a life and times of Bunyan. Wishing health to you, and long life to your healthy book, again I subscribe me,

"Yours in verity,

"C. L."

About the same time the following letter was written, alluding to the same change.

TO MR. GILMAN.

"Dear Gilman-Allsop brought me your kind message yesterday. How can I account for not having visited Highgate this long time? Change of place seemed to have changed me. How grieved I was to hear in what indifferent health Coleridge has been, and I not to know of it! A little school divinity, well applied, may be healing. I send him honest Tom of Aquin; that was always an obscure great idea to me; I never thought or dreamed to see him in the flesh, but t'other day I rescued him from a stall in Barbican, and brought him off in triumph. He comes to greet Coleridge's acceptance, for his shoe-latchets I am unworthy to unloose. Yet there are pretty pro's and con's, and such unsatisfactory learning in him. Commend me to the question of etiquette' utrum annunciatio debuerit fieri per angelum'-Quæst. 30, Articulus 2. I protest, till now I had thought Gabriel a fellow of some mark and likelihood, not a simple esquire, as I find him. Well, do not break your lay brains, nor I neither, with these curious nothings. They are nuts to our dear friend, whom hoping to see at your first friendly hint that it will be convenient, I end with begging our very kindest loves to Mrs. Gilman. We have had a sorry house of it here. Our spirits have been reduced till we were at hope's end what to do. Obliged to leave this house, and afraid to engage another, till, in extremity, I took the desperate resolve of kicking house and

all down, like Bunyan's pack; and here we are in a new life at board and lodging, with an honest couple our neighbours We have ridded ourselves of the cares of dirty acres; and the change, though of less than a week, has had the most beneficial effects on Mary already. She looks two years and a half younger for it. But we have had sore trials.

"God send us one happy meeting! Yours faithfully,

'Chace-side, Enfield, 26th Oct., 1829."

"C. LAMB.

The first result of the experiment was happy, as it brought improved health to Miss Lamb; to which Lamb refers in the following letter to his Suffolk friend, who had announced to him his appointment as assignee under a bankruptcy.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

"December 8th, 1829.

My dear B. B.-You are very good to have been uneasy about us, and I have the satisfaction to tell you that we are both in better health and spirits than we have been for a year or two past. The cause may not appear quite adequate when I tell you that a course of ill health and spirits brought us to the determination of giving up our house here, and we are boarding and lodging with a worthy couple, long inhabitants of Enfield, where everything is done for us without our trouble, further than a reasonable weekly payment. We should have done so before, but it is not easy to flesh and blood to give up an ancient establishment, to discard old Penates, and from housekeepers to turn housesharers. (N.B. We are not in the workhouse.) Diocletian, in his garden, found more repose than on the imperial seat of Rome; and the nob of Charles V. ached seldomer under a monk's cowl than under the diadem. With such shadows of assimilation we countenance our degradation. With such a load of dignified cares just removed from our shoulders, we can the more understand and pity the accession to yours, by the advancement to an assigneeship. I will tell you honestly, B. B., that it has been my long deliberate judgment that all bankrupts, of what denomination, civil or religious, soever, ought to be hanged. The pity of mankind has for ages run in a wrong direction, and been diverted from poor creditors (how many have I known sufferers! Hazlitt has just been defrauded of 1007. by his bookseller friends breaking) to scoundrel debtors. I know all the topics-that distress may overtake an honest man without his fault; that the failure of one that he trusted was his calamity, &c. Then let both be hanged. Oh how careful