r Temple." He was a friend
of George Dyer.]

LETTER 408

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[Dated by H.C. R. Jan., 1827.]

Dear R. do not say any thing to Mr. G. about the day _or_ Petition, for
Mr. Jekyll wishes it to be next week, and thoroughly approves of my
formula, and Mr. G. might not, and then they will clash. Only speak to
him of Gardner's wish to have the Lad. Mr. Jekyll was excessive
friendly. C.L.

[The matter referred to is still the Norrises' welfare. Mr. Hazlitt says
that an annuity of L80 was settled by the Inn on Mrs. Norris.

Here perhaps should come a letter from Lamb to Allsop, printed by Mr.
Fitzgerald, urging Allsop to go to Highgate to see Coleridge and tell
him of the unhappy state of his, Allsop's, affairs. In Crabb Robinson's
_Diary_ for February 1, 1827, I read: "I went to Lamb. Found him in
trouble about his friend Allsop, who is a ruined man. Allsop is a very
good creature who has been a generous friend to Coleridge." Writing of
his troubles in _Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S.T.
Coleridge_, Allsop says: "Charles Lamb, Charles and Mary Lamb, 'union is
partition,' were never wanting in the hour of need."]

LETTER 409

CHARLES LAMB TO B.R. HAYDON

[March, 1827.]

Dear Raffaele Haydon,--Did the maid tell you I came to see your picture,
not on Sunday but the day before? I think the face and bearing of the
Bucephalus-tamer very noble, his flesh too effeminate or painty. The
skin of the female's back kneeling is much more carnous. I had small
time to pick out praise or blame, for two lord-like Bucks came in, upon
whose strictures my presence seemed to impose restraint: I plebeian'd
off therefore.

I think I have hit on a subject for you, but can't swear it was never
executed,--I never heard of its being,--"Chaucer beating a Franciscan
Friar in Fleet Street." Think of the old dresses, houses, &c. "It
seemeth that both these learned men (Gower and Chaucer) were of the
Inner Temple; for not many years since Master Buckley did see a record
in the same house where Geoffry Chaucer was fined two shillings for
beating a Franciscan Friar in Fleet Street." _Chaucer's Life by T.
Speght, prefixed to the black letter folio of Chaucer_, 1598.

Yours in haste (salt fish waiting), C. LAMB.

[Haydon's picture was his "Alexander and Bucephalus." The two Bucks, he
tells us in his _Diary_, were the Duke of Devonshire