ove with you, and whom I fell in love
with--an inquisitive, prying, curious Beauty--where is she?

_Votre Tres Humble Serviteur_,

CHARLOIS AGNEAU,

_alias_ C. LAMB.

Guichy is well, and much as usual. He seems blind to all the
distinctions of life, except to those of sex. Remembrance to Kenny and
Poole.

[John Howard Payne (1792-1852) was born in New York. He began life as an
actor in 1809 as Young Norval in "Douglas," and made his English _debut_
in 1813 in the same part. For several years he lived either in London or
Paris, where among his friends were Washington Irving and Talma. He
wrote a number of plays, and in one of them, "Clari, or the Maid of
Milan," is the song "Home, Sweet Home," with Bishop's music, on which
his immortality rests. Payne died in Tunis, where he was American
Consul, in 1852, and when in 1883 he was reinterred at Washington, it
was as the author of "Home, Sweet Home." He seems to have been a
charming but ill-starred man, whom to know was to love.

Mr. White was Edward White of the India House, by whom Lamb probably
sent a copy of the 1818 edition of his _Works_. Louisa was Louisa
Holcroft. Guichy was possibly the Frenchman, mentioned by Crabb
Robinson, with whom the Lambs had travelled to France. Poole was, I
imagine, John Poole, the dramatist, author of burlesque plays in the
_London Magazine_ and later of "Paul Pry," which, it is quite likely, he
based on Lamb's sketch "Tom Pry."]

LETTER 293

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[Dated at end: 9 October 1822.]

Dear Sir--I am asham'd not sooner to have acknowledged your letter and
poem. I think the latter very temperate, very serious and very
seasonable. I do not think it will convert the club at Pisa, neither do
I think it will satisfy the bigots on our side the water. Something like
a parody on the song of Ariel would please them better.

Full fathom five the Atheist lies,
Of his bones are hell-dice made.--

I want time, or fancy, to fill up the rest. I sincerely sympathise with
you on your doleful confinement. Of Time, Health, and Riches, the first
in order is not last in excellence. Riches are chiefly good, because
they give us Time. What a weight of wearisome prison hours have [I] to
look back and forward to, as quite cut out [of] life--and the sting of
the thing is, that for six hours every day I have no business which I
could not contract into two, if they would let me work Task-work. I
shall be gla