The compliment to the translatress is daintily conceived.  Nothing is choicer in that sort of writing than to bring in some remote, impossible parallel,—­as between a great empress and the inobtrusive, quiet soul who digged her noiseless way so perseveringly through that rugged Paraguay mine.  How she Dobrizhoffered it all out, it puzzles my slender Latinity to conjecture.  Why do you seem to sanction Landor’s unfeeling allegorizing away of honest Quixote?  He may as well say Strap is meant to symbolize the Scottish nation before the Union, and Random since that Act of dubious issue; or that Partridge means the Mystical Man, and Lady Bellaston typifies the Woman upon Many Waters.  Gebir, indeed, may mean the state of the hop markets last month, for anything I know to the contrary.  That all Spain overflowed with romancical books (as Madge Newcastle calls them) was no reason that Cervantes should not smile at the matter of them; nor even a reason that, in another mood, he might not multiply them, deeply as he was tinctured with the essence of them.  Quixote is the father of gentle ridicule, and at the same time the very depository and treasury of chivalry and highest notions.  Marry, when somebody persuaded Cervantes that he meant only fun, and put him upon writing that unfortunate Second Part, with the confederacies of that unworthy duke and most contemptible duchess, Cervantes sacrificed his instinct to his understanding.

We got your little book but last night, being at Enfield, to which place we came about a month since, and are having quiet holidays.  Mary walks her twelve miles a day some days, and I my twenty on others.  ’T is all holiday with me now, you know; the change works admirably.

For literary news, in my poor way, I have a one-act farce [1] going to be acted at Haymarket; but when? is the question, ’Tis an extravaganza, and like enough to follow “Mr. H.”  “The London Magazine” has shifted its publishers once more, and I shall shift myself out of it.  It is fallen.  My ambition is not at present higher than to write nonsense for the playhouses, to eke out a something contracted income. Tempus erat.  There was a time, my dear Cornwallis, when the muse, etc.  But I am now in Mac Flecknoe’s predicament,—­

“Promised a play, and dwindled to a farce.”  Coleridge is better (was, at least, a few weeks since) than he has been for years.  His accomplishing his book at last has been a source of vigor to him.  We are on a half visit to his friend Allsop, at a Mrs. Leishman’s, Enfield, but expect to be at Colebrooke Cottage in a week or so, where, or anywhere, I shall be always most happy to receive tidings from you.  G. Dyer is in the height of an uxorious paradise.  His honeymoon will not wane till he wax cold.  Never was a more happy pair, since Acme and Septimius, and longer.  Farewell, with many thanks, dear S. Our loves to all round your Wrekin.

Your old friend,

C. LAMB.