to put 'em on again. I pitch Colburn and his magazine to the
divil. I find I can live without the necessity of writing, tho' last
year I fretted myself to a fever with the hauntings of being starved.
Those vapours are flown. All the difference I find is that I have no
pocket money: that is, I must not pry upon an old book stall, and cull
its contents as heretofore, but shoulders of mutton, Whitbread's entire,
and Booth's best, abound as formerly.

I don't know whom or how many to send our love to, your household is so
frequently divided, but a general health to all that may be fixed or
wandering; stars, wherever. We read with pleasure some success (I forget
quite what) of one of you at Oxford. Mrs. Monkhouse (... was one of you)
sent us a kind letter some [months back], and we had the pleasure to
[see] her in tolerable spirits, looking well and kind as in by-gone
days.

Do take pen, or put it into goodnatured hands Dorothean
or Wordsworthian-female, or Hutchinsonian, to inform us of
your present state, or possible proceedings. I am ashamed
that this breaking of the long ice should be a letter of business.
There is none circum praecordia nostra I swear by the honesty
of pedantry, that wil I nil I pushes me upon scraps of Latin.
We are yours cordially: CHAS. & MARY LAMB.

September. 1826.

[In this letter, the first to Wordsworth for many months, we have the
first mention of Edward Moxon, who was to be so closely associated with
Lamb in the years to come. Moxon, a young Yorkshireman, educated at the
Green Coat School, was then nearly twenty-five, and was already author
of _The Prospect and other Poems_, dedicated to Rogers, who was destined
to be a valuable patron. Moxon subsequently became Wordsworth's
publisher.

"Constable ... Baldwin." Archibald Constable & Co., Scott's publishers,
failed in 1826. Baldwin was the first publisher of the _London
Magazine_.

"I pitch Colburn and his magazine." Lamb wrote nothing in the _New
Monthly Magazine_ after September, 1826.

I append portions of what seems to be Lamb's first letter to Edward
Moxon, obviously written before this date, but not out of place here.
The letter seems to have accompanied the proof of an article on Lamb
which he had corrected and was returning to Moxon.]

LETTER 400

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

(_Fragment_)

Were my own feelings consulted I should print it verbatim, but I won't
hoax you, else I love a Lye. My