["The poor Lady” was, I imagine, the widow of Antony Robinson.]

LETTER 451

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

March 19th, 1828.

My dear M.—­It is my firm determination to have nothing to do with “Forget-me-Nots”—­pray excuse me as civilly as you can to Mr. Hurst.  I will take care to refuse any other applications.  The things which Pickering has, if to be had again, I have promised absolutely, you know, to poor Hood, from whom I had a melancholy epistle yesterday; besides that, Emma has decided objections to her own and her friend’s Album verses being published; but if she gets over that, they are decidedly Hood’s.

Till we meet, farewell.  Loves to Dash.  C.L.

[Moxon seems to have asked Lamb for a contribution for one of Hurst’s annuals, probably the Keepsake.

Hood was to edit The Gem for 1829.

“Dash.”—­Moxon seems to have been the present master of the dog.

Here should come a letter from Lamb to Edward Irving, introducing Hone, who in later life became devout and preached at the Weigh House Chapel in Eastcheap.]

LETTER 452

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M.  April 21, 1828.]

DEAR B.B.—­You must excuse my silence.  I have been in very poor health and spirits, and cannot write letters.  I only write to assure you, as you wish’d, of my existence.  All that which Mitford tells you of H.’s book is rhodomontade, only H. has written unguardedly about me, and nothing makes a man more foolish than his own foolish panegyric.  But I am pretty well cased to flattery, or its contrary.  Neither affect[s] me a turnip’s worth.  Do you see the Author of May you Like it?  Do you write to him?  Will you give my present plea to him of ill health for not acknowledge a pretty Book with a pretty frontispiece he sent me.  He is most esteem’d by me.  As for subscribing to Books, in plain truth I am a man of reduced income, and don’t allow myself 12 shillings a-year to buy OLD BOOKS with, which must be my Excuse.  I am truly sorry for Murray’s demur, but I wash my hands of all booksellers, and hope to know them no more.  I am sick and poorly and must leave off, with our joint kind remembrances to your daughter and friend A.K.  C.L.

["H.’s book.”  In Hunt’s Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries Lamb was praised very warmly.

“The Author of May you Like it”—­the Rev. C.B.  Tayler.  The book with a pretty frontispiece was A Fireside Book, 1828, with a frontispiece by George Cruikshank.

“Murray’s demur"-an unfavourable reply, possibly to a suggestion of Barton’s concerning a new volume.]

LETTER 453

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP