Knight for the life of me.
She is a very pleas--, but I won't write all we have said of her so
often to ourselves, because I suspect you would read it to her. Only
give my sister's and my kindest rememb'ces to her, and how glad we are
we can say that word. If ever she come to Southwark again I count upon
another pleasant BRIDGE walk with her. Tell her, I got home, time for a
rubber; but poor Tryphena will not understand that phrase of the
worldlings.

I am hardly able to appreciate your volume now. But I liked the
dedicat'n much, and the apology for your bald burying grounds. To
Shelly, but _that_ is not new. To the young Vesper-singer, Great
Bealing's, Playford, and what not?

If there be a cavil it is that the topics of religious consolation,
however beautiful, are repeated till a sort of triteness attends them.
It seems as if you were for ever losing friends' children by death, and
reminding their parents of the Resurrection. Do children die so often,
and so good, in your parts? The topic, taken from the considerat'n that
they are snatch'd away from _possible vanities_, seems hardly sound; for
to an omniscient eye their conditional failings must be one with their
actual; but I am too unwell for Theology. Such as I am, I am yours and
A.K.'s truly

C. LAMB.

["My poor pittance"-"The Convalescent."

"Your Book"-Barton's _Poems_, 4th edition, 1825. The dedication was to
Barton's sister, Maria Hack.

"Anne Knight." A Quaker lady, who kept a school at Woodbridge.]

LETTER 378

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN AITKEN

Colebrooke Cottage, Islington, July 5, 1825.

DEAR Sir,--With thanks for your last No. of the Cabinet-- as I cannot
arrange with a London publisher to reprint "Rosamund Gray" as a book, it
will be at your service to admit into the Cabinet as soon as you please.
Your h'ble serv't, CH's LAMB.

EMMA, eldest of your name,
Meekly trusting in her God
Midst the red-hot plough-shares trod,
And unscorch'd preserved her fame.
By that test if _you_ were tried,
Ugly names might be defied;
Though devouring fire's a glutton,
Through the trial you might go
'On the light fantastic toe,'
Nor for plough-shares care a BUTTON.

[Aitken was an Edinburgh bookseller who edited _The Cabinet; or, The
Selected Beauties of Literature_, 1824, 1825 and 1831. The particular
interest of the letter is that