rather an agreeable
excrescence--like his poetry--redundant. Hone has hanged himself for
debt. Godwin was taken up for picking pockets.... Beckey takes to bad
courses. Her father was blown up in a steam machine. The coroner found
it Insanity. I should not like him to sit on my letter.

Do you observe my direction? Is it Gallic?--Classical?

Do try and get some frogs. You must ask for "grenouilles" (green-eels).
They don't understand "frogs," though it's a common phrase with us.

If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne) enquire if old Godfrey is living,
and how he got home from the Crusades. He must be a very old man now.

If there is anything new in politics or literature in France, keep it
till I see you again, for I'm in no hurry. Chatty-Briant is well I hope.

I think I have no more news; only give both our loves ("all three," says
Dash) to Mrs. Patmore, and bid her get quite well, as I am at present,
bating qualms, and the grief incident to losing a valuable relation.

C.L.

Londres, July 19, 1827.

[This is from Patmore's _My Friends and Acquaintances_, 1854; but I have
no confidence in Patmore's transcription. After "picking pockets" should
come, for example, according to other editors, the sentence, "Moxon has
fallen in love with Emma, our nut-brown maid." This is the first we hear
of the circumstance and quite probably Lamb was then exaggerating. As it
happened, however, Moxon and Miss Isola, as we shall see, were married
in 1833.

We do not know the name of the widow; but her husband was Lamb's cousin,
the bookbinder.

The doubt about the Hazlitts refers chiefly to William Hazlitt's divorce
from his first wife in 1822, and his remarriage in 1824 with a Mrs.
Bridgewater.

"Your book." Patmore, in _My Friends and Acquaintances_, writes:--

This refers to a series of tales that I was writing, (since published
under the title of _Chatsworth, or the Romance of a Week_.) for the
subject of one of which he had recommended me to take "The Old Law." As
Lamb's critical faculties (as displayed in the celebrated "specimens"
which created an era in the dramatic taste of England) were not
surpassed by those of any writer of his day, the reader may like to see
a few "specimens" of some notes which Lamb took the pains to make on two
of the tales that were shown to him. I give these the rather that there
is occasionally blended with their critical nicety of tact, a drollery
that is very characteristic of the write