that we may all bear as severe an examination.  He was an admirable scholar.  His Dante and his Homer were as familiar to him as his Alphabets:  and he had the tenderest heart.  When a flock of turkies was stolen from his farm, the indignation of the poor far and wide was great and loud.  To me he is the greatest loss, for we were nearly of an age; and there is now no human being alive in whose eyes I have always been young.

Under the date June 10, 1829, Mr. Macdonald prints a note from Lamb to Ayrton, which states that he has two young friends in the house.  Here, therefore, I think, should come a letter from Lamb to William Hazlitt, Junior, in which Lamb says that he cannot see Mrs. Hazlitt this time.  He adds that the ladies are very pleasant.  Emma Isola adds a letter which tells us that the ladies are herself and her friend Maria.  This would be the Maria of Lamb’s sonnet “Harmony in Unlikeness,” evidently written at this time (see Vol.  IV.).]

LETTER 489

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

Enfield Chase Side

Saturday 25 July A.D. 1829.—­11 A.M.

There—­a fuller plumper juiceier date never dropt from Idumean palm.  Am I in the dateive case now? if not, a fig for dates, which is more than a date is worth.  I never stood much affected to these limitary specialities.  Least of all since the date of my superannuation.

  What have I with Time to do? } Dear B.B.—­Your hand writing has
  Slaves of desks, twas meant for you.} conveyed much pleasure to me

in report of Lucy’s restoration.  Would I could send you as good news of my poor Lucy.  But some wearisome weeks I must remain lonely yet.  I have had the loneliest time near 10 weeks, broken by a short apparition of Emma for her holydays, whose departure only deepend the returning solitude, and by 10 days I have past in Town.  But Town, with all my native hankering after it, is not what it was.  The streets, the shops are left, but all old friends are gone.  And in London I was frightfully convinced of this as I past houses and places—­empty caskets now.  I have ceased to care almost about any body.  The bodies I cared for are in graves, or dispersed.  My old Clubs, that lived so long and flourish’d so steadily, are crumbled away.  When I took leave of our adopted young friend at Charing Cross, ’twas heavy unfeeling rain, and I had no where to go.  Home have I none—­and not a sympathising house to turn to in the great city.  Never did the waters of the heaven pour down on a forlorner head.  Yet I tried 10 days at a sort of a friend’s house, but it was large and straggling—­one of the individuals of my old long knot of friends, card players, pleasant companions—­that have tumbled to pieces into dust and other things—­and I got home on Thursday, convinced that I was better to get home to my hole at Enfield, and hide like a sick cat in my corner.  Less than a month I hope