ld I "bless thee--ere I let thee go!"
From month to month has the exhaustless flow
Of thy original mind, its wealth revealing,
With quaintest humour, and deep pathos healing
The World's rude wounds, revived Life's early glow:
And, mixt with this, at times, to earnest thought,
Glimpses of truth, most simple and sublime,
By thy imagination have been brought
Over my spirit. From the olden time
Of authorship thy patent should be dated,
And thou with Marvell, Brown, and Burton mated.]

LETTER 348

CHARLES LAMB TO W. MARTER [Dated at end: July 19 (1824).]

Dear Marter,--I have just rec'd your letter, having returned from a
month's holydays. My exertions for the London are, tho' not dead, in a
dead sleep for the present. If your club like scandal, Blackwood's is
your magazine; if you prefer light articles, and humorous without
offence, the New Monthly is very amusing. The best of it is by Horace
Smith, the author of the Rejected Addresses. The Old Monthly has more of
matter, information, but not so merry. I cannot safely recommend any
others, as not knowing them, or knowing them to their disadvantage. Of
Reviews, beside what you mention, I know of none except the Review on
Hounslow Heath, which I take it is too expensive for your ordering. Pity
me, that have been a Gentleman these four weeks, and am reduced in one
day to the state of a ready writer. I feel, I feel, my gentlemanly
qualities fast oozing away--such as a sense of honour, neckcloths twice
a day, abstinence from swearing, &c. The desk enters into my soul.

See my thoughts on business next Page.

SONNET

Who first invented _work?_--and bound the free
And holyday-rejoicing Spirit down
To the ever-haunting importunity
Of _Business_ in the green fields, and the Town--
To plough, loom, [anvil], spade, and (oh most sad!)
To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood?
Who but the Being unblest, alien from good,
Sabbathless Satan! He, who his unglad
Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings,
That round and round incalculably reel--
For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel--
In that red realm from whence are no returnings;
Where toiling & turmoiling ever & aye
He and his Thoughts keep pensive worky-day.

With many recollections of pleasanter times, my old compeer,
happily released before me, Adi