(out of mistaken tenderness) this opinion of mine, I plainly told Mrs Godwin that I did find a fault, which I should reserve naming until I should see you and talk it over. This she may very well remember, and also that I declined naming this fault until she drew it from me by asking me if there was not too much fancy in the work. I then confessed generally what I felt, but refused to go into particulars until I had seen you. I am never very fond of saying things before third persons, because in the relation (such is human nature) something is sure to be dropped. If Mrs Godwin has been the cause of your misconstruction, I am very angry, tell her; yet it is not an anger unto death. I remember also telling Mrs G. (which she may have dropt) that I was by turns considerably more delighted than I expected. But I wished to reserve all this until I saw you. I even had conceived an expression to meet you with, which was thanking you for some of the most exquisite pieces of criticism I had ever read in my life. In particular, I should have brought forward that on "Troilus and Cressida " and Shakespear, which, it is little to say, delighted me, and instructed me (if not absolutely instructed me, yet put into full-grown sense many conceptions which had arisen in me before in my most discriminating moods). All these things I was preparing to say, and bottling them up till I came, thinking to please my friend and host, the author! when lo! this deadly blight intervened.

I certainly ought to make great allowances for your misunderstanding me. You, by long habits of composition and a greater command gained over your own powers, cannot conceive of the desultory and uncertain way in which I (an author by fits) sometimes cannot put the thoughts of a common letter into sane prose. Any work which I take upon myself as an engagement will act upon me to torment, e.g., when I have undertaken, as three or four times I have, a school-boy

copy of verses for Merchant Taylor's boys, at a guinea a copy, I have fretted over them, in perfect inability to do them, and have made my sister wretched with my wretchedness for a week together. The

same, till by habit I have acquired a mechanical command, I have felt in making paragraphs. As to reviewing, in particular, my head is so whimsical a head, that I cannot, after reading another man's book, let it have never been so pleasing, give any account of it in any methodical way. I cannot follow his train. Something like this you must have perceived of me in conversation. Ten thousand times I have confessed to you, talking of my talents, my utter inability to remember in any comprehensive way what I read. I can vehemently applaud, or perversely stickle, at parts; but I cannot grasp at a whole. This infirmity (which is nothing to brag of) may be seen in my two little compositions, the tale and my play, in both which no reader, however partial, can find any story. I wrote such stuff about Chaucer, and got into such digressions, quite irreducible into 1 column of a paper, that I was perfectly ashamed to shew it you. However, it is become a serious matter that I should convince you I neither slunk from the task through a wilful deserting neglect, or through any (most imaginary on your part) distaste of Chaucer; and I will try my hand again, I hope with better luck. My health is bad and my time taken up, but all I can spare between this and Sunday shall be employed for you, since you desire it: and if I bring you a crude, wretched paper on Sunday, you must burn it, and forgive me; if it proves anything better than I predict, may it be a peace-offering of sweet incense between us. C. LAMB.

CHAPTER III

A FRESH START: "MR H." AND CHILDREN'S BOOKS

CXIX.

JANUARY 1804-DECEMBER 1809

TO ROBERT LLOYD

Tuesday March 13, 1804. Dear Robert,-I received your notes safe, and thank you for them. It seems you are about to be married. Joy to you and uninterrupted satisfaction in that state. But who is the Lady? it is the character of your letters, that you omit facts, dates, names and matter, and describe nothing but feelings; in which as I cannot always partake, as being more intense in degree or different in kind from my own tranquil ones, I cannot always well tell how to reply. Your dishes are too much sauced, and spiced, and flavored, for me to suppose that you can relish my plain meats and vulgar aliment. Still, Robert, if I cannot always send you of the same, they have a smack and a novelty, a Robert-ism about them, that makes them a dainty stimulus to my palate at times.

I have little to tell you of. You are mistaken; I am disengaged from all newspaper connexions, and breathe a freer air in consequence. I was bound like Gulliver in a multitude of little chains; which, by quotidian teazing, swelled to a rack and a gibbet in the year's account. I am poorer but happier. Your three pounds came seasonably, but I doubt whether I am fairly entitled to them as a debt.

I am obliged to break off here, and would not send this unfinished, but that you might otherwise be uneasy about the monies.

Am I ever to see you? For it is like letters to the dead, or for a friend to write to his friend in the Fortunate Isles, or the moon, or at the Antipodes, to

address a line to one in Warwickshire that I am never to see in London. I shall lose the very face of Robert by disuse, and I question, if I were a painter, if I could now paint it from memory.

I could tell you many things; but you are SO spiritual and abstracted, that I fear to insult you with tidings of this world. But may your approaching husband-hood humanize you. I think I see a dawn. I am sure joy is rising upon you, and I stand a tiptoe to see the sun ascending, till it gets up and up, and, "while a man tells the story," shews at last a fair face and a full light.

CXX.

God bless you Robert.

TO SARAH STODDART

C. L.

May, 1804.

My dear Miss Stoddart,-Mary has written so fully to you that I have nothing to add but that in all the kindness she has exprest, and loving desire to see you again, I bear my full part. You will perhaps like to tear this half from the sheet, and give your brother only his strict due, the remainder. So I will just repay your late kind letter with this short postscript to hers. Come over here, and let us all be merry again.

CXXI.

TO ROBERT LLOYD

C. LAMB.

[September 13, 1804.]

Dear Robert,-I was startled in a very pleasant manner by the contents of your letter. It was like your good self, to take so handsome an opportunity of renewing an old friendship. I thank you kindly for your offers to bring me acquainted with Mrs LÍ. I cannot come now, but assuredly I will some time or other, to see how this new relation sits upon you. I am naturally shy of new faces; but the Lady who has chosen my old friend Robert, cannot have a