Here, a little out of its order, might come a letter from Lamb to Hood, December 17, 1828, which is facsimiled in a privately-printed American bibliography of Lamb, the owner of which declines to let not only me but the Boston Bibliophile Society include it with the correspondence.  In it Lamb expresses regret, not so much that Hood had signed “The Widow” with Lamb’s name, but that an unfortunately ambiguous jest, pointed out to him by certain friends, had crept into it.  He asks that the subject may never be referred to again.

Here perhaps should come a note to Miss Reynolds, Hood’s sister-in-law, accompanying Lamb’s Essay on Hogarth.]

LETTER 466

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date.  Dec., 1828.]

Dear M.,—­As I see no blood-marks on the Green Lanes Road, I conclude you got in safe skins home.  Have you thought of inquiring Miss Wilson’s change of abode?  Of the 2 copies of my drama I want one sent to Wordsworth, together with a complete copy of Hone’s “Table Book,” for which I shall be your debtor till we meet.  Perhaps Longman will take charge of this parcel.  The other is for Coleridge at Mr. Gilman’s, Grove, Highgate, which may be sent, or, if you have a curiosity to see him you will make an errand with it to him, & tell him we mean very soon to come & see him, if the Gilmans can give or get us a bed.  I am ashamed to be so troublesome.  Pray let Hood see the “Ecclectic Review”—­a rogue!  The 2’d parts of the Blackwood you may make waste paper of.  Yours truly,

C.L.

[I do not identify Miss Wilson.  Lamb’s drama was “A Wife’s Trial” in Blackwood for December, 1828.  The same number of the Eclectic Review referred to Hood’s parody of Lamb, “The Widow,” as profaning Leslie’s picture of the widow by its “heartless ribaldry.”  By the 2d parts of Blackwood Lamb referred, I imagine, to the pages on which his play was not printed.]

LETTER 467

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M.  December 5, 1828.]

Dear B.B.—­I am ashamed to receive so many nice Books from you, and to have none to send you in return; You are always sending me some fruits or wholesome pot-herbs, and mine is the garden of the Sluggard, nothing but weeds or scarce they.  Nevertheless if I knew how to transmit it, I would send you Blackwood’s of this month, which contains a little Drama, to have your opinion of it, and how far I have improved, or otherwise, upon its prototype.  Thank you for your kind Sonnet.  It does me good to see the Dedication to a Christian Bishop.  I am for a Comprehension, as Divines call it, but so as that the Church shall go a good deal more than halfway over to the Silent Meeting house.  I have ever said that the Quakers are the only Professors of Christianity as I read it in the Evangiles; I say Professors—­marry,