Kindest remembrances to your sister, and believe me ever yours, C. LAMB.

Remember me kindly to the Allsops.

[Southey was visiting Rickman, then Clerk Assistant to the House of Commons, where he lived.]

LETTER 526

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date. ?  Dec., 1830.]

Dear M. Something like this was what I meant.  But on reading it over, I see no great fun or use in it.  It will only stuff up and encroach upon the sheet you propose.  Do as, and what, you please.  Send Proof, or not, as you like.  If you send, send me a copy or 2 of the Album Verses, and the Juvenile Poetry if bound.

I am happy to say Mary is mending, but not enough to give me hopes of being able to leave her.  I sadly regret that I shall possibly not see Southey or Wordsworth, but I dare not invite either of them here, for fear of exciting my sister, whose only chance is quiet.  You don’t know in what a sad state we have been.

I think the Devil may come out without prefaces, but use your discretion.

Make my kindest remembces to Southey, with my heart’s thanks for his kind intent.  I am a little easier about my Will, and as Ryle is Executor, and will do all a friend can do at the Office, and what little I leave will buy an annuity to piece out tolerably, I am much easier.

Yours ever

C.L.

To 64 New Bond St.

[I cannot say to what the opening sentences refer:  probably an advertisement for Satan in Search of a Wife ("the Devil"), which Lamb had just written and Moxon was publishing.

The reference to the Juvenile Poetry suggests that Moxon had procured some of the sheets of the Poetry for Children which Godwin brought out in 1809, and was binding up a few.  This theory is borne out by the statement in the letter to Mrs. Norris, later, that the book was not to be had for love or money, and the circumstance that in 1833 Lamb seems to send her a copy.  Ryle was Charles Ryle. an India House clerk, and Lamb’s executor with Talfourd.]

LETTER 527

CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER

Dec. 20, 1830.

Dear Dyer,—­I would have written before to thank you for your kind letter, written with your own hand.  It glads us to see your writing.  It will give you pleasure to hear that, after so much illness, we are in tolerable health and spirits once more.  Miss Isola intended to call upon you after her night’s lodging at Miss Buffam’s, but found she was too late for the stage.  If she comes to town before she goes home, she will not miss paying her respects to Mrs. Dyer and you, to whom she desires best love.  Poor Enfield, that has been so peaceable hitherto, has caught the inflammatory fever, the tokens are upon her! and a great fire was blazing last night in the barns and haystacks of a