I am but poorlyish, and feel myself writing a dull letter; poorlyish from Company, not generally, for I never was better, nor took more walks, 14 miles a day on an average, with a sporting dog—­Dash—­you would not know the plain Poet, any more than he doth recognize James Naylor trick’d out au deserpoy (how do you spell it.) En Passant, J’aime entendre da mon bon homme sur surveillance de croix, ma pas l’homme figuratif—­do you understand me?

[The verses with which Emma was delighted were probably written for her album.  I have not seen them.  That album was cut up for the value of its autographs and exists now only in a mutilated state:  where, I cannot discover.  The pocket-book was The Bijou, 1828, edited by William Fraser for Pickering.  Only one of Lamb’s contributions was included:  his verses for his own album (see Vol.  IV. of this edition).

Jameson was Robert Jameson, to whom Hartley Coleridge addressed the sonnets in the London Magazine to which Lamb alludes in a previous letter.  He was the husband of Mrs. Jameson, author of Sacred and Legendary Art, but the marriage was not happy.  He lived in Chenies Street.

“Future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.’s.”  A line from some verses written by Lamb in more than one album.  Probably originally intended for Emma Isola’s album.  The passage runs, answering the question, “What is an Album?”—­

        ’Tis a Book kept by modern Young Ladies for show,
        Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know. 
        ’Tis a medley of scraps, fine verse, and fine prose,
        And some things not very like either, God knows. 
        The soft First Effusions of Beaux and of Belles,
        Of future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.’s.

L.E.L. was, of course, the unhappy Letitia Landon, a famous contributor to the published albums.

“My tragi comedy.”  Still “The Wife’s Trial.”  Kemble was Charles Kemble, manager of Covent Garden Theatre.  The play was never acted.

“Your refusal to lend your poetical sanction.”  This is not clear, but I think the meaning to be deducible.  The Icon was Pulham’s etching of Lamb.  Evans was William Evans, who had grangerised Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.  I take it that he was now making another collection of portraits of poets and was asking other poets, their friends, to write verses upon them.  In this way he had applied through Lamb to Barton for verses on Pulham’s Elia, and had been refused.  This is, of course, only conjecture.

“Your Drummonds”—­your bankers.  Barton’s bankers were the Alexanders, a Quaker firm.

“James Naylor.”  Barton had paraphrased Nayler’s “Testimony.”

Following this letter, under the date August 29, 1827, should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Jameson (husband of Mrs. Jameson) asking him to interest himself in Miss Isola’s career.  “Our friend Coleridge will bear witness to the very excellent manner in which she read to him some of the most difficult passages in the Paradise Lost.”]