that sort on Lacken water?  If not, ’tis indispensable I send it you, with my Blackwood, if you tell me how best to send them.  Fludyer is pleasant.  You are getting gay and Hood-ish.  What is the Enigma? money—­if not, I fairly confess I am foiled—­and sphynx must [here are words crossed through] 4 times I’ve tried to write eat—­eat me—­and the blotting pen turns it into cat me.  And now I will take my leave with saying I esteem thy verses, like thy present, honour thy frontispicer, and right-reverence thy Patron and Dedicatee, and am, dear B.B.

Yours heartily, C.L.

Our joint kindest Loves to A.K. and your Daughter.

[Barton’s new book was A New Year’s Eve and other Poems, 1828, dedicated to Charles Richard Sumner, Bishop of Winchester.  This volume contains Barton’s “Fireside Quatrains to Charles Lamb” (quoted in Vol.  IV.) and also the following “Sonnet to a Nameless Friend,” whom I take to be Lamb:—­

SONNET TO A NAMELESS FRIEND

    In each successive tome that bears my name
      Hast thou, though veiled thy own from public eyes,
      Won from my muse that willing sacrifice
    Which worth and talents such as thine should claim: 
    And I should close my minstrel task with shame,
      Could I forget the indissoluble ties
      Which every grateful thought of thee supplies
    To one who deems thy friendship more than fame. 
    Accept then, thus imperfectly, once more,
      The homage of thy poet and thy friend;
      And should thy partial praise my lays commend,
    Versed as thou art in all the gentle lore
    Of English poesy’s exhaustless store,
      Whom I most love they never can offend.

Martin’s frontispiece represented Christ walking on the water.  Lamb recalls his remarks in a previous letter about this painter, who though he never became Royal Architect was the originator of the present Thames Embankment.  Macaulay, in his essay on Southey’s edition of the Pilgrim’s Progress, in the Edinburgh for December, 1831, makes some very similar remarks about Martin and the way in which he would probably paint Lear.

In the poem “Lady Rachel Russell; or, A Roman Hero and an English Heroine Compared,” Barton compared the act of Curtius, who leaped into the gulf in the Forum, with Lady Russell standing beside her lord.

Chalon was the painter of a portrait of Thomas Clarkson.

The “Battle of Gibeon” is a poem inspired by Martin’s picture of Joshua; the last stanza runs thus:—­

        Made known by marvels awfully sublime! 
          Yet far more glorious in the Christian’s sight
        Than these stern terrors of the olden time,
          The gentler splendours of that peaceful night,
        When opening clouds displayed, in vision bright,
          The heavenly host to Bethlehem’s shepherd train,
        Shedding around them more than cloudless light! 
          “Glory to God on high!” their opening strain,
        Its chorus, “Peace on Earth!” its theme Messiah’s reign!