ys kept his thoughts at call. Writing to
Wordsworth in September, 1805, he says:--"Hang work! I wish that all the
year were holyday. I am sure that Indolence indefeasible Indolence is
the true state of man, and business the invention of the Old Teazer who
persuaded Adam's Master to give him an apron and set him a-houghing. Pen
and Ink and Clerks, and desks, were the refinements of this old torturer
a thousand years after...."

Lamb probably was as fond of this sonnet as of anything he wrote in what
might be called his second poetical period. He copied it into his first
letter to Bernard Barton, in September, 1822, and he drew attention to
it in his _Elia_ essay "The Superannuated Man."

* * * * *

Page 60. _Leisure_.

First printed in the _London Magazine_ for April, 1821, probably, I
think, as a protest against the objection taken by some persons to the
opinions expressed by Lamb in his essay on "New Year's Eve" in that
magazine for January (see Vol. II., and notes). Lamb had therein said,
speaking of death:--"I am not content to pass away 'like a weaver's
shuttle.' Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable
draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that
smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable
course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town
and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of
streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still
at the age to which I am arrived; I, and my friends. To be no younger,
no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age; or drop,
like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave."

Such sentiments probably called forth some private as well as public
protests; and it was, as I imagine, in a whimsical wish to emphasise the
sincerity of his regard for life that Lamb reiterated that devotion in
the emphatic words of "Leisure" in the April number. This sonnet was a
special favourite with Edward FitzGerald.

It is sad to think that Lamb, when his leisure came, had too much of it.
Writing to Barton on July 25, 1829, during one of his sister's
illnesses, he says: "I bragg'd formerly that I could not have too much
time. I have a surfeit.... I am a sanguinary murderer of time, that
would kill him inchmeal just now."

Page 60. _To Samuel Rogers, Esq_.

Daniel Rogers, the poet's elder brother, died in 1829. In ac