WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

[No date. January, 1823.]

Dear Wordsworth, I beg your acceptance of ELIA, detached from any of its
old companions which might have been less agreeable to you. I hope your
eyes are better, but if you must spare them, there is nothing in my
pages which a Lady may not read aloud without indecorum, _which is more
than can be said of Shakspeare_.

What a nut this last sentence would be for Blackwood!

You will find I availed myself of your suggestion, in curtailing the
dissertation on Malvolio.

I have been on the Continent since I saw you.

I have eaten frogs.

I saw Monkhouse tother day, and Mrs. M. being too poorly to admit of
company, the annual goosepye was sent to Russell Street, and with its
capacity has fed "A hundred head" (not of Aristotle's) but "of Elia's
friends."

Mrs. Monkhouse is sadly confined, but chearful.--

This packet is going off, and I have neither time, place nor solitude
for a longer Letter.

Will you do me the favor to forward the other volume to Southey?

Mary is perfectly well, and joins me in kindest rememb'ces to you all.

[_Signature cut away_.]

["What a nut... for Blackwood." To help on Maga's great cause against
Cockney arrogance.

"The dissertation on Malvolio." In Elia the essays on the Old Actors
were much changed and rearranged (see Appendix to Vol. II. in this
edition).]

LETTER 306

CHARLES LAMB TO MR. AND MRS. J.D. COLLIER

Twelfth Day [January 6], 1823.

THE pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear pigmy. There was some
contention as to who should have the ears, but in spite of his obstinacy
(deaf as these little creatures are to advice) I contrived to get at one
of them.

It came in boots too, which I took as a favor. Generally those petty
toes, pretty toes! are missing. But I suppose he wore them, to look
taller.

He must have been the least of his race. His little foots would have
gone into the silver slipper. I take him to have been Chinese, and a
female.--

If Evelyn could have seen him, he would never have farrowed two such
prodigious volumes, seeing how much good can be contained in--how small
a compass!

He crackled delicately.

John Collier Jun has sent me a Poem which (without the smallest bias
from the aforesaid present, believe me) I pronounce _sterling_.

I set about Evelyn, and finished the first volume in the course of a
natural day. To-day I attack the second--Parts are very interesting.--

I left a