but a copy, I only expect it from Hood’s being my friend.  Coleridge has lately been here.  He too is deep among the prophets, the year-servers,—­the mob of gentleman annuals.  But they’ll cheat him, I know.  And now, dear B. B., the sun shining out merrily, and the dirty clouds we had yesterday having washed their own faces clean with their own rain, tempts me to wander up Winchmore Hill, or into some of the delightful vicinages of Enfield, which I hope to show you at some time when you can get a few days up to the great town.  Believe me, it would give both of us great pleasure to show you our pleasant farms and villages.

We both join in kindest loves to you and yours.

C. LAMB redivivus.

[1] An edition de luxe, illustrated by John Martin, and with an Introduction by Southey.  See Macaulay’s review of it.

[2] Hood’s.

[3] The translator of Dante.

XCIX.

TO PROCTER.

January 22, 1829.

Don’t trouble yourself about the verses.  Take ’em coolly as they come.  Any day between this and midsummer will do.  Ten lines the extreme.  There is no mystery in my incognita.  She has often seen you, though you may not have observed a silent brown girl, who for the last twelve years has rambled about our house in her Christmas holidays.  She is Italian by name and extraction. [1] Ten lines about the blue sky of her country will do, as it’s her foible to be proud of it.  Item, I have made her a tolerable Latinist.  She is called Emma Isola.  I shall, I think, be in town in a few weeks, when I will assuredly see you.  I will put in here loves to Mrs. Procter and the Anti-Capulets [Montagus], because Mary tells me I omitted them in my last.  I like to see my friends here.  I have put my lawsuit into the hands of an Enfield practitioner,—­a plain man, who seems perfectly to understand it, and gives me hopes of a favorable result.

Rumor tells us that Miss Holcroft is married.  Who is Baddams?  Have I seen him at Montacute’s?  I hear he is a great chemist.  I am sometimes chemical myself.  A thought strikes me with horror.  Pray Heaven he may not have done it for the sake of trying chemical experiments upon her,—­young female subjects are so scarce!  An’t you glad about Burke’s case?  We may set off the Scotch murders against the Scotch novels,—­Hare the Great Unhanged. [2]

Martin Burney is richly worth your knowing.  He is on the top scale of my friendship ladder, on which an angel or two is still climbing, and some, alas! descending.  I am out of the literary world at present.  Pray, is there anything new from the admired pen of the author of “The Pleasures of Hope”?  Has Mrs. He-mans (double masculine) done anything pretty lately?  Why sleeps the lyre of Hervey and of Alaric Watts?  Is the muse of L. E. L. silent?  Did you see a sonnet of mine in Blackwood’s last? [3] Curious construction!