Martin’s Belshazzar (the picture) I have seen.  Its architectural effect is stupendous; but the human figures, the squalling contorted little antics that are playing at being frightend, like children at a sham ghost who half know it to be a mask, are detestable.  Then the letters are nothing more than a transparency lighted up, such as a Lord might order to be lit up, on a sudden at a Xmas Gambol, to scare the ladies.  The type is as plain as Baskervil’s—­they should have been dim, full of mystery, letters to the mind rather than the eye.—­Rembrandt has painted only Belshazzar and a courtier or two (taking a part of the banquet for the whole) not fribbled out a mob of fine folks.  Then every thing is so distinct, to the very necklaces, and that foolish little prophet.  What one point is there of interest?  The ideal of such a subject is, that you the spectator should see nothing but what at the time you would have seen, the hand—­and the King—­not to be at leisure to make taylor-remarks on the dresses, or Doctor Kitchener-like to examine the good things at table.

Just such a confusd piece is his Joshua, fritterd into 1000 fragments, little armies here, little armies there—­you should see only the Sun and Joshua; if I remember, he has not left out that luminary entirely, but for Joshua, I was ten minutes a finding him out.

Still he is showy in all that is not the human figure or the preternatural interest:  but the first are below a drawing school girl’s attainment, and the last is a phantasmagoric trick, “Now you shall see what you shall see, dare is Balshazar and dare is Daniel.”  You have my thoughts of M. and so adieu C. LAMB.

[Lamb had sent Barton the picture that is reproduced in Vol.  V. of my large edition.  Later Lamb had sent the following lines:—­

        When last you left your Woodbridge pretty,
        To stare at sights, and see the City,
        If I your meaning understood,
        You wish’d a Picture, cheap, but good;
        The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy;
        To suit a Poet’s quiet study,
        Where Books and Prints for delectation
        Hang, rather than vain ostentation. 
        The subject? what I pleased, if comely;
        But something scriptural and homely: 
        A sober Piece, not gay or wanton,
        For winter fire-sides to descant on;
        The theme so scrupulously handled,
        A Quaker might look on unscandal’d;
        Such as might satisfy Ann Knight,
        And classic Mitford just not fright. 
        Just such a one I’ve found, and send it;
        If liked, I give—­if not, but lend it. 
        The moral? nothing can be sounder. 
        The fable? ’tis its own expounder—­
        A Mother teaching to her Chit
        Some good book, and explaining it. 
        He, silly urchin, tired of lesson,