Our 2’nd N’o is all trash.  What are T. and H. about?  It is whip syllabub, “thin sown with aught of profit or delight.”  Thin sown! not a germ of fruit or corn.  Why did poor Scott die!  There was comfort in writing with such associates as were his little band of Scribblers, some gone away, some affronted away, and I am left as the solitary widow looking for water cresses.

The only clever hand they have is Darley, who has written on the Dramatists, under name of John Lacy.  But his function seems suspended.

I have been harassed more than usually at office, which has stopt my correspondence lately.  I write with a confused aching head, and you must accept this apology for a Letter.

I will do something soon if I can as a peace offering to the Queen of the East Angles.  Something she shan’t scold about.

For the Present, farewell.

Thine C.L.

10 Feb. 1825.

I am fifty years old this day.  Drink my health.

["That ugly paper” was “A Vision of Horns.”

Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age had just been published, containing criticisms, among others, of Coleridge, Horne Tooke, and Lamb.  Lamb was very highly praised.  Here is a passage from the article:—­

How admirably he has sketched the former inmates of the South-Sea House; what “fine fretwork he makes of their double and single entries!” With what a firm yet subtle pencil he has embodied “Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist!” How notably he embalms a battered beau; how delightfully an amour, that was cold forty years ago, revives in his pages!  With what well-disguised humour he introduces us to his relations, and how freely he serves up his friends!  Certainly, some of his portraits are fixtures, and will do to hang up as lasting and lively emblems of human infirmity.  Then there is no one who has so sure an ear for “the chimes at midnight,” not even excepting Mr. Justice Shallow; nor could Master Silence himself take his “cheese and pippins” with a more significant and satisfactory air.  With what a gusto Mr. Lamb describes the Inns and Courts of law, the Temple and Gray’s Inn, as if he had been a student there for the last two hundred years, and had been as well acquainted with the person of Sir Francis Bacon as he is with his portrait or writings!  It is hard to say whether St. John’s Gate is connected with more intense and authentic associations in his mind, as a part of old London Wall, or as the frontispiece (time out of mind) of the Gentleman’s Magazine.  He hunts Watling Street like a gentle spirit; the avenues to the play-houses are thick with panting recollections; and Christ’s Hospital still breathes the balmy breath of infancy in his description of it!

“Your Gentleman Brother”—­John Barton, Bernard’s younger half-brother.

“The Author-mometer.”  I have not discovered to what Lamb refers.