Dear Sir—­You have misapprehended me sadly, if you suppose that I meant to impute any inconsistency (in your writing poetry) with your religious profession.  I do not remember what I said, but it was spoken sportively, I am sure.  One of my levities, which you are not so used to as my older friends.  I probably was thinking of the light in which your so indulging yourself would appear to Quakers, and put their objection in my own foolish mouth.  I would eat my words (provided they should be written on not very coarse paper) rather than I would throw cold water upon your, and my once, harmless occupation.  I have read Napoleon and the rest with delight.  I like them for what they are, and for what they are not.  I have sickened on the modern rhodomontade & Byronism, and your plain Quakerish Beauty has captivated me.  It is all wholesome cates, aye, and toothsome too, and withal Quakerish.  If I were George Fox, and George Fox Licenser of the Press, they should have my absolute IMPRIMATUR.  I hope I have removed the impression.

I am, like you, a prisoner to the desk.  I have been chained to that gally thirty years, a long shot.  I have almost grown to the wood.  If no imaginative poet, I am sure I am a figurative one.  Do “Friends” allow puns? verbal equivocations?—­they are unjustly accused of it, and I did my little best in the “imperfect Sympathies” to vindicate them.

I am very tired of clerking it, but have no remedy.  Did you see a sonnet to this purpose in the Examiner?—­

        “Who first invented Work—­and tied the free
        And holy-day rejoycing spirit down
        To the ever-haunting importunity
        Of business, in the green fields, and the town—­
        To plough—­loom—­anvil—­spade—­&, oh, most sad,
        To this dry drudgery of the desk’s dead wood? 
        Who but the Being Unblest, alien from good,
        Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad
        Task ever plies ’mid rotatory burnings,
        That round and round incalculably reel—­
        For wrath Divine hath made him like a wheel—­
        In that red realm from whence are no returnings;
        Where toiling and turmoiling ever and aye
        He, and his Thoughts, keep pensive worky-day.”

C.L.

I fancy the sentiment exprest above will be nearly your own, the expression of it probably would not so well suit with a follower of John Woolman.  But I do not know whether diabolism is a part of your creed, or where indeed to find an exposition of your creed at all.  In feelings and matters not dogmatical, I hope I am half a Quaker.  Believe me, with great respect, yours

C. LAMB.

I shall always be happy to see, or hear from you.—­