my
head with Rejected Addresses, and all the Smith and Theodore Hook squad.
But, my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you, or
_una eum_ you. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious and
assimilative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so honestly,
supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lock-up house. Gillman,
to whom I read the spirited parody on the introduction to Peter Bell,
the Ode to the Great Unknown, and to Mrs. Fry; he speaks doubtfully of
Reynolds and Hood. But here come Irving and Basil Montagu.

_Thursday night 10 o'clock_.--No! Charles, it is _you_. I have read them
over again, and I understand why you have _anon'd_ the book. The puns
are nine in ten good--many excellent --the Newgatory transcendent. And
then the _exemplum sine exemplo_ of a volume of personalities, and
contemporaneities, without a single line that could inflict the
infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any man in his senses: saving and
except perhaps in the envy-addled brain of the despiser of your _Lays_.
If not a triumph over him, it is at least an _ovation_. Then, moreover,
and besides, to speak with becoming modesty, excepting my own self, who
is there but you who can write the musical lines and stanzas that are
intermixed?

Here, Gillman, come up to my Garret, and driven back by the guardian
spirits of four huge flower-holders of omnigenous roses and
honeysuckles--(Lord have mercy on his hysterical olfactories! What will
he do in Paradise? I must have a pair or two of nostril-plugs, or
nose-goggles laid in his coffin)--stands at the door, reading that to
M'Adam, and the washer-woman's letter, and he admits _the facts_. You
are found _in the manner_, as the lawyers say! so, Mr. Charles! hang
yourself up, and send me a line, by way of token and acknowledgment. My
dear love to Mary. God bless you and your Unshamabramizer.

S.T. COLERIDGE.

Reynolds was John Hamilton Reynolds. According to a marked copy in the
possession of Mr. Buxton Forman, Reynolds wrote only the odes to Mr.
M'Adam, Mr. Dymoke, Sylvanus Urban, Elliston and the Dean and Chapter of
Westminster.

The newspaper in which Lamb complimented the book was the _New Times_,
for April 12, 1825. See Vol. I. of the present edition for the review,
where the remarks on puns are repeated. The "Mag. Ignotum" was the ode
to the Great Unknown, the author of the Scotch novels. In the same paper
on January 8, 1825, Lamb had written an essa