e you, and my sister (though
innocent) will be still more so; for the folly was done without her
knowledge, and has made her uneasy ever since. My guardian angel was
absent at that time.

I will muster up courage to see you, however, any day next week
(Wednesday excepted). We shall hope that you will bring Edith with you.
That will be a second mortification. She will hate to see us; but come
and heap embers. We deserve it, I for what I've done, and she for being
my sister.

Do come early in the day, by sun-light, that you may see my _Milton_.

I am at Colebrook Cottage, Colebrook Row, Islington. A detached whitish
house, close to the New River, end of Colebrook Terrace, left hand from
Sadler's Wells.

Will you let me know the day before?

Your penitent C. LAMB.

P.S.--I do not think your handwriting at all like Hunt's. I do not think
many things I did think.

[For the right appreciation of this letter Elia's Letter to Southey must
be read (see Vol. I. of the present edition). It was hard hitting, and
though Lamb would perhaps have been wiser had he held his hand, yet
Southey had taken an offensive line of moral superiority and rebuke, and
much that was said by Lamb was justified.

Southey's reply ran thus:--

My Dear Lamb--On Monday I saw your letter in the _London Magazine_,
which I had not before had an opportunity of seeing, and I now take
the first interval of leisure for replying to it.

Nothing could be further from my mind than any intention or
apprehension of any way offending or injuring a man concerning whom
I have never spoken, thought, or felt otherwise than with affection,
esteem, and admiration.

If you had let me know in any private or friendly manner that you
felt wounded by a sentence in which nothing but kindness was
intended--or that you found it might injure the sale of your book--I
would most readily and gladly have inserted a note in the next
Review to qualify and explain what had hurt you.

You have made this impossible, and I am sorry for it. But I will not
engage in controversy with you to make sport for the Philistines.

The provocation must be strong indeed that can rouse me to do this,
even with an enemy. And if you can forgive an unintended offence as
heartily as I do the way in which you have resented it, there will
be nothing to prevent our meeting as we have heretofore done, a