to submit to water gruel processes?—­this has been for many weeks my lot, and my excuse—­my fingers drag heavily over this paper, and to my thinking it is three and twenty furlongs from here to the end of this demi-sheet—­I have not a thing to say—­nothing is of more importance than another—­I am flatter than a denial or a pancake—­emptier than Judge Park’s wig when the head is in it—­duller than a country stage when the actors are off it —­a cypher—­an O—­I acknowledge life at all, only by an occasional convulsional cough, and a permanent phlegmatic pain in the chest—­I am weary of the world—­Life is weary of me—­ My day is gone into Twilight and I don’t think it worth the expence of candles—­my wick hath a thief in it, but I can’t muster courage to snuff it—­I inhale suffocation—­I can’t distinguish veal from mutton—­nothing interests me—­’tis 12 o’clock and Thurtell is just now coming out upon the New Drop—­Jack Ketch alertly tucking up his greasy sleeves to do the last office of mortality, yet cannot I elicit a groan or a moral reflection—­ if you told me the world will be at end tomorrow, I should just say, “will it?”—­I have not volition enough to dot my i’s —­much less to comb my EYEBROWS—­my eyes are set in my head—­my brains are gone out to see a poor relation in Moorfields, and they did not say when they’d come back again—­ my scull is a Grub street Attic, to let—­not so much as a joint stool or a crackd jordan left in it—­my hand writes, not I, from habit, as chickens run about a little when their heads are off—­ O for a vigorous fit of gout, cholic, tooth ache—­an earwig in my auditory, a fly in my visual organs—­pain is life—­the sharper, the more evidence of life—­but this apathy, this death—­did you ever have an obstinate cold, a six or seven weeks’ unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, fear, conscience, and every thing—­yet do I try all I can to cure it, I try wine, and spirits, and smoking, and snuff in unsparing quantities, but they all only seem to make me worse, instead of better—­I sleep in a damp room, but it does me no good; I come home late o’ nights, but do not find any visible amendment.

Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

It is just 15 minutes after 12.  Thurtell is by this time a good way on his journey, baiting at Scorpion perhaps, Ketch is bargaining for his cast coat and waistcoat, the Jew demurs at first at three half crowns, but on consideration that he, may get somewhat by showing ’em in the Town, finally closes.—­

C.L.

["Judge Park’s wig.”  Sir James Alan Park, of the Bench of Common Pleas, who tried Thurtell, the murderer of Mr. William Weare of Lyon’s Inn, in Gill’s Hill Lane, Radlett, on October 24, 1823.]

LETTER 340

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M.  January 23, 1824.]