ret, that poor Elisa
Fenwick (that was)--Mrs. Rutherford--is dead; and that we have received
a most heart-broken letter from her mother--left with four
grandchildren, orphans of a living scoundrel lurking about the pothouses
of Little Russell Street, London: they and she--God help 'em!--at New
York. I have just received Godwin's third volume of the _Republic_,
which only reaches to the commencement of the Protectorate. I think he
means to spin it out to his life's thread. Have you seen Fearn's
_Anti-Tooke_? I am no judge of such things--you are; but I think it very
clever indeed. If I knew your bookseller, I'd order it for you at a
venture: 'tis two octavos, Longman and Co. Or do you read now? Tell it
not in the Admiralty Court, but my head aches _hesterno vino_. I can
scarce pump up words, much less ideas, congruous to be sent so far. But
your son must have this by to-night's post.[_Here came a passage
relating to an escapade of young Stoddart, then at the Charterhouse,
which, probably through Lamb's intervention, was treated leniently. Lamb
helped him--with his imposition-- Gray's "Elegy" into Greek elegiacs_.]
Manning is gone to Rome, Naples, etc., probably to touch at Sicily,
Malta, Guernsey, etc.; but I don't know the map. Hazlitt is resident at
Paris, whence he pours his lampoons in safety at his friends in England.
He has his boy with him. I am teaching Emma Latin. By the time you can
answer this, she will be qualified to instruct young ladies: she is a
capital English reader: and S.T.C. acknowledges that a part of a passage
in Milton she read better than he, and part he read best, her part being
the shorter. But, seriously, if Lady St------ (oblivious pen, that was
about to write _Mrs._!) could hear of such a young person wanted (she
smatters of French, some Italian, music of course), we'd send our loves
by her. My congratulations and assurances of old esteem. C.L.

[Stoddart had been appointed in 1826 Chief-Justice and Justice of the
Vice-Admiralty Court in Malta and had been knighted in the same year.
His daughter Isabella had just married. Lady Stoddart's literary efforts
did not, I think, reach print.

"The deductions of severe reason." See the quotation from Cottle in the
letter to Manning of November, 1802.

"A change of ministry." On Liverpool's resignation early in 1827 Canning
had been called in to form a new Ministry, which he effected by an
alliance with the Whigs.

"Godwin's _Republ