I shall not have heard how she is to-day until too late for the Post, but if any great change takes place for better or worse, I shall certainly let you know.

She tells me something about having given away one of my coats to your servant. It is a new one, and perhaps may be of small use to him. If you can get it me again, I shall be very willing to give him a compensation. I shall also be much obliged by your sending in a parcel all the manuscripts books &c. she left behind. I want in particular the Dramatic Extracts, as my purpose is to make use of the remainder of my holydays in completing them at the British Museum, which will be employment and money in the end.

I am exceedingly harassed with the journey, but that will go off in a day or two, and I will get to work. I know you will grieve for us, but I hope my sister's illness is not worse than many she has got through before.

Only I am afraid the fatigue of the journey may affect her general health. You shall have notice how she goes on. In the meantime, accept kindest thanks. (Signature cut off.)

CLXVI.

TO MRS CLARKSON

Monday, 18 Sep. 1810.

Dear Mrs Clarkson, I did not write till I could have the satisfaction of sending you word that my Sister was better. She is in fact quite restored, and will be with me in little more than a week.—I received Mr C.'s Letter and transmitted it to Hazlitt-My kind Love to him, and to Miss W. Tell her I hope that while she stays in London, she will make our chambers her Lodging. If she can put up with half a Bed, I am sure she will be a most welcome visitor to Mary and me.-The Montagu's set out for the North this day.

What fine things they are going to see, for the first time! which I have seen, but in all human probability shall never see again!—the mountains often come back to me in my dreams, or rather I miss them at those times, for I have been repeatedly haunted with the same dream, which is that I am in Cumberland, that I have been there some weeks, and am at the end of my Holidays, but in all that time I have not seen Skiddaw &c.—the Hills are all vanished, and I shall go home without seeing them. The trouble of this dream denotes the weight they must have had on my mind, and while I was there, which was almost oppressive, and perhaps is caused by the great difficulty I have in recalling any thing like a distinct form of any one of those great masses to my memory. Bless me I have scarce left room to say Good-B'ye.— C. LAMB.

CLXVII.

TO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Friday, 19th Oct, 1810. E. I. Ho. Dear W.,-Mary has been very ill, which you have heard, I suppose, from the Montagues. She is very weak and low-spirited now. I was much pleased with your continuation of the Essay on Epitaphs. It is the only sensible thing which has been written on that subject, and it goes to the bottom. In particular I was pleased with your translation of that turgid epitaph into the plain feeling under it. It is perfectly a test. But what is the reason we have no good epitaphs after all ?

A very striking instance of your position might be found in the churchyard of Ditton-upon-Thames, if you know such a place. Ditton-upon-Thames has been blessed by the residence of a poet, who for love or money, I do not well know which, has dignified every gravestone, for the last few years, with bran

new verses, all different, and all ingenious, with the author's name at the bottom of each. This sweet Swan of Thames has so artfully diversified his strains and his rhymes, that the same thought never occurs twice; more justly, perhaps, as no thought ever occurs at all, there was a physical impossibility that the same thought should recur. It is long since I saw and read these inscriptions, but I remember the impression was of a smug usher at his desk in the intervals of instruction, levelling his pen. Of death, as it consists of dust and worms, and mourners and uncertainty, he had never thought; but the word "death" he had often seen separate and conjunct with other words, till he had learned to speak of all its attributes as glibly as Unitarian Belsham will discuss you the attributes of the word "God" in a pulpit; and will talk of infinity with a tongue that dangles from a skull that never reached in thought and thorough imagination two inches, or further than from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to the sounding-board of the pulpit.

But the epitaphs were trim, and sprag, and patent, and pleased the survivors of Thames-Ditton above the old mumpsimus of "Afflictions Sore." Το do justice though, it must be owned that even the excellent feeling which dictated this dirge when new must have suffered something in passing through so many thousand applications, many of them no doubt quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington churchyard (I think) an Epitaph to an infant who died "Etatis four months," with this seasonable inscription appended, "Honour thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long in the land," &c. Sincerely wishing your children long life to honour, &c., I remain,

C. LAMB.