om thence I turned to V. Bourne--what a sweet unpretending
pretty-mannered _matter-ful_ creature, sucking from every flower, making
a flower of every thing--his diction all Latin, and his thoughts all
English. Bless him, Latin wasn't good enough for him--why wasn't he
content with the language which Gay and Prior wrote in."

On the publication of _Album Verses_, wherein these nine poems from
Vincent Bourne were printed, Lamb reviewed the book in Moxon's
_Englishman's Magazine_ for September, 1831, under the title "The Latin
Poems of Vincent Bourne" (see Vol. I.). There he quoted "The Ballad
Singers," and the "Epitaph on an Infant Sleeping"--remarking of
Bourne:--"He is 'so Latin,' and yet 'so English' all the while. In
diction worthy of the Augustan age, he presents us with no images that
are not familiar to his countrymen. His topics are even closelier drawn;
they are not so properly English, as _Londonish_. From the streets, and
from the alleys, of his beloved metropolis, he culled his objects, which
he has invested with an Hogarthian richness of colouring. No town
picture by that artist can go beyond his BALLAD-SINGERS; Gay's TRIVIA
alone, in verse, comes up to the life and humour of it."

* * * * *

Page 72. _Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill_.

First printed in _The New Times_, October 24, 1825. The version there
given differed considerably from that preserved by Lamb. It had no
divisions. At the end of what is now the first strophe qame these
lines:--

Now, by Saint Hilary,
(A Saint I love to swear by,
Though I should forfeit thereby
Five ill-spared shillings to your well-warm'd seat,
Worshipful Justices of Worship-street;
Or pay my crown
At great Sir Richard's still more awful mandate down:)
They raise my gorge--
Those Ministers of Ann, or the First George,
(Which was it?
For history is silent, and my closet--
Reading affords no clue;
I have the story, Pope, alone from you;)
In such a place, &c.

Lamb offered the Ode to his friend Walter Wilson, for his work on Defoe,
to which Lamb contributed prose criticisms (see Vol. I.), but Wilson did
not use it. The letter making this offer, together with the poem,
differing very slightly in one or two places, is preserved in the
Bodleian.

* * * * *

Page 75. _Going or Gone_.

First