CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[Feb. 10.  P.M.  Feby. 11, 1833.]

I wish you would omit “by the author of Elia,” now, in advertising that damn’d “Devil’s Wedding.”

I had sneaking hopes you would have dropt in today—­tis my poor birthday.  Don’t stay away so.  Give Forster a hint—­you are to bring your brother some day—­sisters in better weather.

Pray give me one line to say if you receiv’d and forwarded Emma’s pacquet to Miss Adams,

and how Dover St. looks.

Adieu.

Is there no Blackwood this month?

[Added on cover:—­]

What separation will there be between the friend’s preface, and THE ESSAYS?  Should not “Last Essays &c.” head them?  If ’tis too late, don’t mind.  I don’t care a farthing about it.

["What separation”—­the Last Essays of Elia were preceded by “A Character of the Late Elia.”

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Louisa Badams, dated February 15, 1833.  Lamb begins with a further reference to the Enfield murder.  He says that his sister and himself have got through the Inferno with the help of Cary, and Mary is beginning Tasso.]

LETTER 561

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date.  Feb., 1833.]

My dear M.—­I send you the last proof—­not of my friendship—­ pray see to the finish.

I think you will see the necessity of adding those words after “Preface”—­and “Preface” should be in the “contents-table”—­

I take for granted you approve the title.  I do thoroughly—­ Perhaps if you advertise it in full, as it now stands, the title page might have simply the Last Essays of Elia, to keep out any notion of its being a second vol.—­

Well, I wish us luck heartily for your sake who have smarted by me.—­

LETTER 562

CHARLES LAMB TO T.N.  TALFOURD

February, 1833.

My dear T.,—­Now cannot I call him Serjeant; what is there in a coif?  Those canvas-sleeves protective from ink, when he was a law-chit—­a Chittyling, (let the leathern apron be apocryphal) do more ’specially plead to the Jury Court of old memory.  The costume (will he agnize it?) was as of a desk-fellow or Socius Plutei.  Methought I spied a brother!

That familiarity is extinct for ever.  Curse me if I can call him Mr. Serjeant—­except, mark me, in company.  Honour where honour is due; but should he ever visit us, (do you think he ever will, Mary?) what a distinction should I keep up between him and our less fortunate friend, H.C.R.!  Decent respect shall always be the Crabb’s—­but, somehow, short of reverence.

Well, of my old friends, I have lived to see two knighted:  one made a judge, another in a fair way to it.  Why am I restive? why stands my sun upon Gibeah?