y. The next leaf is for Rev'd J.M. In this ADIEU thine
briefly in a tall friendship C. LAMB.

[Barton's letter, to which this is an answer, not being preserved, we do
not know what his scruples were. B.B. was a great contributor to
annuals.

"With a white stone." In trials at law a white stone was cast as a vote
for acquittal, a black stone for condemnation (see Ovid,
_Metamorphoses_, 15, 41).

"Master Mathew"--in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His Humour."

"Croly"--the Rev. George Croly (1780-1860), of the _Literary Gazette_,
author of _The Angel of the World_ and other pretentious poems.

"Mitford's Sacred Specimens"--_Sacred Specimens Selected from the Early
English Poets_, 1827. The last poem, by Mitford himself, was "Lines
Written under the Portrait of Edward VI."

"Hood's book"--_Whims and Oddities_, second series, 1827.

Here should come a note to Allsop stating that Lamb is "near killed with
Christmassing."]

LETTER 405

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

Colebrooke Row, Islington,

Saturday, 20th Jan., 1827.

Dear Robinson,--I called upon you this morning, and found that you were
gone to visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like errand. Poor Norris
has been lying dying for now almost a week, such is the penalty we pay
for having enjoyed a strong constitution! Whether he knew me or not, I
know not, or whether he saw me through his poor glazed eyes; but the
group I saw about him I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or about it,
were assembled his wife and two daughters, and poor deaf Richard, his
son, looking doubly stupified. There they were, and seemed to have been
sitting all the week. I could only reach out a hand to Mrs. Norris.
Speaking was impossible in that mute chamber. By this time I hope it is
all over with him. In him I have a loss the world cannot make up. He was
my friend and my father's friend all the life I can remember. I seem to
have made foolish friendships ever since. Those are friendships which
outlive a second generation. Old as I am waxing, in his eyes I was still
the child he first knew me. To the last he called me Charley. I have
none to call me Charley now. He was the last link that bound me to the
Temple. You are but of yesterday. In him seem to have died the old
plainness of manners and singleness of heart. Letters he knew nothing
of, nor did his reading extend beyond the pages of the "Gentleman's
Magazine." Yet there was a pride of lit