LETTER 386

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER

Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Tuesday [early 1826].

Dear Ollier,—­I send you two more proverbs, which will be the last of this batch, unless I send you one more by the post on THURSDAY; none will come after that day; so do not leave any open room in that case.  Hood sups with me to-night.  Can you come and eat grouse?  ’Tis not often I offer at delicacies.

Yours most kindly, C. LAMB.

LETTER 387

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES OLLIER

January, 1826.

Dear O.,—­We lamented your absence last night.  The grouse were piquant, the backs incomparable.  You must come in to cold mutton and oysters some evening.  Name your evening; though I have qualms at the distance.  Do you never leave early?  My head is very queerish, and indisposed for much company; but we will get Hood, that half Hogarth, to meet you.  The scrap I send should come in AFTER the “Rising with the Lark.”

Yours truly.

Colburn, I take it, pays postages.

[The scrap was the Fallacy “That we Should Lie Down with the Lamb,” which has perhaps the rarest quality of the series.

Here perhaps should come two further notes to Ollier, referring to some articles on Chinese jests by Manning.

Here should come a letter to Mr. Hudson dated February 1, 1826, recommending a nurse for a mental case.  Given in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]

LETTER 388

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M.  February 7, 1826.]

My kind remembrances to your daughter and A.K. always.

Dear B.B.—­I got your book not more than five days ago, so am not so negligent as I must have appeared to you with a fortnight’s sin upon my shoulders.  I tell you with sincerity that I think you have completely succeeded in what you intended to do.  What is poetry may be disputed.  These are poetry to me at least.  They are concise, pithy, and moving.  Uniform as they are, and unhistorify’d, I read them thro’ at two sittings without one sensation approaching to tedium.  I do not know that among your many kind presents of this nature this is not my favourite volume.  The language is never lax, and there is a unity of design and feeling, you wrote them with love—­to avoid the cox-combical phrase, con amore.  I am particularly pleased with the “Spiritual Law,” page 34-5.  It reminded me of Quarles, and Holy Mr. Herbert, as Izaak Walton calls him:  the two best, if not only, of our devotional poets, tho’ some prefer Watts, and some Tom Moore.

I am far from well or in my right spirits, and shudder at pen and ink work.  I poke out a monthly crudity for Colburn in his magazine, which I call “Popular Fallacies,” and periodically crush a proverb or two, setting up my folly against the wisdom of nations.  Do you see the “New Monthly”?