more than their head. I am glad you
esteem Manning, though you see but his husk or shrine. He discloses not,
save to select worshippers, and will leave the world without any one
hardly but me knowing how stupendous a creature he is. I am perfecting
myself in the "Ode to Eton College" against Thursday, that I may not
appear unclassic. I have just discovered that it is much better than the
"Elegy."

In haste, C.L.

P.S.--I do not know what to say to your _latest_ theory about Nero being
the Messiah, though by all accounts he was a 'nointed one.

["Next week early." Canon Ainger's text here has: "May we venture to
bring Emma with us?"

"Your nephew's pleasant book"--Henry Nelson Coleridge's _Six Months in
the West Indies in 1825_. In the last chapter but one of the book is an
account of the slave question, under the title "Planters and Slaves."

"Sternhold"--Thomas Sternhold, the coadjutor of Hopkins in paraphrasing
the Psalms.

"The pantomime." Coleridge seems to have had some project for
modernising Dekker for Fanny Kelly. Mr. Dykes Campbell suggested that
the play to be treated was "Old Fortunatus."

"Miss Gray." I have found nothing of this lady.

"Manning." Writing to Robert Lloyd twenty-five years earlier Lamb had
said of Manning: "A man of great Power--an enchanter almost.--Far beyond
Coleridge or any man in power of impressing --when he gets you alone he
can act the wonders of Egypt. Only he is lazy, and does not always put
forth all his strength; if he did, I know no man of genius at all
comparable to him."

"Against Thursday." Coleridge was "at home" on Thursday evenings.
Possibly on this occasion some one interested in Gray was to be there,
or the allusion may be a punning one to Miss Gray.

"Your _latest_ theory." I cannot explain this.]

LETTER 392

CHARLES LAMB TO H.F. CARY

April 3, 1826.

Dear Sir,--It is whispered me that you will not be unwilling to look
into our doleful hermitage. Without more preface, you will gladden our
cell by accompanying our old chums of the London, Darley and Allan
Cunningham, to Enfield on Wednesday. You shall have hermit's fare, with
talk as seraphical as the novelty of the divine life will permit, with
an innocent retrospect to the world which we have left, when I will
thank you for your hospitable offer at Chiswick, and with plain hermit
reasons evince the necessity of abiding here.

Without hear