Mr. Grattan was Thomas Colley Grattan (1792-1864), who was then living in Paris.  His book would be Highways and Byways, first series, 1823.

There is one other note to Payne in the Century Magazine, unimportant and undated, suggesting a walk one Sunday.]

LETTER 311

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M.  February 17, 1823.]

My dear Sir—­I have read quite through the ponderous folio of G.F.  I think Sewell has been judicious in omitting certain parts, as for instance where G.F. has revealed to him the natures of all the creatures in their names, as Adam had.  He luckily turns aside from that compendious study of natural history, which might have superseded Buffon, to his proper spiritual pursuits, only just hinting what a philosopher he might have been.  The ominous passage is near the beginning of the Book.  It is clear he means a physical knowledge, without trope or figure.  Also, pretences to miraculous healing and the like are more frequent than I should have suspected from the epitome in Sewell.  He is nevertheless a great spiritual man, and I feel very much obliged by your procuring me the Loan of it.  How I like the Quaker phrases—­though I think they were hardly completed till Woolman.  A pretty little manual of Quaker language (with an endeavour to explain them) might be gathered out of his Book.  Could not you do it?  I have read through G.F. without finding any explanation of the term first volume in the title page.  It takes in all, both his life and his death.  Are there more Last words of him?  Pray, how may I venture to return it to Mr. Shewell at Ipswich?  I fear to send such a Treasure by a Stage Coach.  Not that I am afraid of the Coachman or the Guard reading it.  But it might be lost.  Can you put me in a way of sending it in safety?  The kind hearted owner trusted it to me for six months.  I think I was about as many days in getting through it, and I do not think that I skipt a word of it.  I have quoted G.F. in my Quaker’s meeting, as having said he was “lifted up in spirit” (which I felt at the time to be not a Quaker phrase), “and the Judge and Jury were as dead men under his feet.”  I find no such words in his Journal, and I did not get them from Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not mean to invent.  I must have put some other Quaker’s words into his mouth.  Is it a fatality in me, that every thing I touch turns into a Lye?  I once quoted two Lines from a translation of Dante, which Hazlitt very greatly admired, and quoted in a Book as proof of the stupendous power of that poet, but no such lines are to be found in the translation, which has been searched for the purpose.  I must have dreamed them, for I am quite certain I did not forge them knowingly.  What a misfortune to have a Lying memory.—­Yes, I have seen Miss Coleridge, and wish I had just such a—­daughter.