gratitude receives;--
May such a quiet, thankful close be mine.
And hence thy fire-side chair appears to me
A peaceful throne--which thou wert form'd to fill;
Thy children--ministers, who do thy will;
And those grand-children, sporting round thy knee,
Thy little subjects, looking up to thee,
As one who claims their fond allegiance still.

And these are the lines at the foot of page 153 in a poem addressed to a
child seven years old:--

There is a holy, blest companionship
In the sweet intercourse thus held with those
Whose tear and smile are guileless; from whose lip
The simple dictate of the heart yet flows;--
Though even in the yet unfolded rose
The worm may lurk, and sin blight blooming youth,
The light born with us long so brightly glows,
That childhood's first deceits seem almost truth,
To life's cold after lie, selfish, and void of ruth.

Van Balen was the painter of the picture of the "Madonna and Child"
which Mrs. FitzGerald (Edward FitzGerald's mother) had given to Barton
and for which he expressed his thanks in a poem.

The artist who painted Lamb recently was Henry Meyer (1782?-1847), the
portrait being that which serves as frontispiece to this volume. I give
in my large edition a reproduction of "The Young Catechist," which Meyer
also engraved, with Lamb's verses attached. In 1910 I saw the original
in a picture shop in the Charing Cross Road, now removed.]

LETTER 413

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE

[No date. End of May, 1827.]

Dear H. in the forthcoming "New Monthly" are to be verses of mine on a
Picture about Angels. Translate em to the Table-book. I am off for
Enfield.

Yours. C.L.

[Written on the back of the XXI. Garrick Extracts. The poem "Angel Help"
was printed in the _New Monthly Magazine_ for June and copied by Hone in
the _Table-Book_, No. 24, 1827.]

LETTER 414

CHARLES LAMB TO WILLIAM HONE

[No date. June, 1827.]

Dear Hone, I should like this in your next book. We
are at Enfield, where (when we have solituded awhile)
we shall be glad to see you. Yours,

C. LAMB.

[This was written on the back of the MS. of "Going or Gone" (see Vol.
IV.), a poem of reminiscences of Lamb's early Widford days, printed in
Hone's _Table-Book_, June, 1827, signed E