and Mr. Agar Ellis.
Haydon did not take up the Chaucer subject.]

LETTER 410

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE [No date. April, 1827.]

Dear H. Never come to our house and not come in. I was quite vex'd.

Yours truly. C.L.

There is in Blackwood this month an article MOST AFFECTING indeed called
Le Revenant, and would do more towards abolishing Capital Punishments
than 400000 Romillies or Montagues. I beg you read it and see if you can
extract any of it. _The Trial scene in particular_.

[Written on the fourteenth instalment of the Garrick Play extracts. The
article was in _Blackwood_ for April, 1827. Hone took Lamb's advice, and
the extract from it will be found in the _Table Book_, Vol. I., col.
455.

Lamb was peculiarly interested in the subject of survival after hanging.
He wrote an early _Reflector_ essay, "On the Inconveniences of Being
Hanged," on the subject, and it is the pivot of his farce "The
Pawnbroker's Daughter."

"Romillies or Montagues." Two prominent advocates for the abolition of
capital punishment were Sir Samuel Romilly (who died in 1818) and Basil
Montagu.]

LETTER 411

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HOOD

[No date. May, 1827.]

Dearest Hood,--Your news has spoil'd us a merry meeting. Miss Kelly and
we were coming, but your letter elicited a flood of tears from Mary, and
I saw she was not fit for a party. God bless you and the mother (or
should be mother) of your sweet girl that should have been. I have won
sexpence of Moxon by the _sex_ of the dear gone one.

Yours most truly and hers,

[C.L.]

[This note refers to one of the Hoods' children, which was still-born.
It was upon this occasion that Lamb wrote the beautiful lines "On an
Infant Dying as soon as Born" (see Vol. IV.).]

LETTER 412

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[No date. (1827.)]

My dear B.B.--A gentleman I never saw before brought me your welcome
present--imagine a scraping, fiddling, fidgetting, petit-maitre of a
dancing school advancing into my plain parlour with a coupee and a
sideling bow, and presenting the book as if he had been handing a glass
of lemonade to a young miss--imagine this, and contrast it with the
serious nature of the book presented! Then task your imagination,
reversing this picture, to conceive of quite an opposite messenger, a
lean, straitlocked, wheyfaced methodist, for such was he in reality who
brought it, the Genius (it seems) of the Wesleyan Magazine. Certes,
friend B., thy