[1] The Lambs’ old servant.

XXI.

TO MANNING.

Before June, 1800.

Dear Manning,—­I feel myself unable to thank you sufficiently for your kind letter.  It was doubly acceptable to me, both for the choice poetry and the kind, honest prose which it contained.  It was just such a letter as I should have expected from Manning.

I am in much better spirits than when I wrote last.  I have had a very eligible offer to lodge with a friend in town.  He will have rooms to let at midsummer, by which time I hope my sister will be well enough to join me.  It is a great object to me to live in town, where we shall be much more private, and to quit a house and neighborhood where poor Mary’s disorder, so frequently recurring, has made us a sort of marked people.  We can be nowhere private except in the midst of London.  We shall be in a family where we visit very frequently; only my landlord and I have not yet come to a conclusion.  He has a partner to consult.  I am still on the tremble, for I do not know where we could go into lodgings that would not be, in many respects, highly exceptionable.  Only God send Mary well again, and I hope all will be well!  The prospect, such as it is, has made me quite happy.  I have just time to tell you of it, as I know it will give you pleasure.  Farewell.

C. LAMB.

XXII.

TO COLERIDGE,

August, 6, 1800.

Dear Coleridge,—­I have taken to-day and delivered to Longman and Co., Imprimis:  your books, viz., three ponderous German dictionaries, one volume (I can find no more) of German and French ditto, sundry other German books unbound, as you left them, Percy’s Ancient Poetry, and one volume of Anderson’s Poets.  I specify them, that you may not lose any. Secundo:  a dressing-gown (value, fivepence), in which you used to sit and look like a conjuror when you were translating “Wallenstein.”  A case of two razors and a shaving-box and strap.  This it has cost me a severe struggle to part with.  They are in a brown-paper parcel, which also contains sundry papers and poems, sermons, some few Epic poems,—­one about Cain and Abel, which came from Poole, etc., and also your tragedy; with one or two small German books, and that drama in which Got-fader performs. Tertio:  a small oblong box containing all your letters, collected from all your waste papers, and which fill the said little box.  All other waste papers, which I judged worth sending, are in the paper parcel aforesaid.  But you will find all your letters in the box by themselves.  Thus have I discharged my conscience and my lumber-room of all your property, save and except a folio entitled Tyrrell’s “Bibliotheca Politica,” which you used to learn your politics out of when you wrote for the Post,—­mutatis