oubts on that head.

Your refusal to lend your poetical sanction to my Icon, and your reasons
to Evans, are most sensible. May be I may hit on a line or two of my own
jocular. May be not.

Do you never Londonize again? I should like to talk over old poetry with
you, of which I have much, and you I think little. Do your Drummonds
allow no holydays? I would willingly come and w[ork] for you a three
weeks or so, to let you loose. Would I could sell or give you some of my
Leisure! Positively, the best thing a man can have to do is nothing, and
next to that perhaps--good works.

I am but poorlyish, and feel myself writing a dull letter; poorlyish
from Company, not generally, for I never was better, nor took more
walks, 14 miles a day on an average, with a sporting dog--Dash--you
would not know the plain Poet, any more than he doth recognize James
Naylor trick'd out au deserpoy (how do you spell it.) En Passant, J'aime
entendre da mon bon homme sur surveillance de croix, ma pas l'homme
figuratif--do you understand me?

[The verses with which Emma was delighted were probably written for her
album. I have not seen them. That album was cut up for the value of its
autographs and exists now only in a mutilated state: where, I cannot
discover. The pocket-book was _The Bijou_, 1828, edited by William
Fraser for Pickering. Only one of Lamb's contributions was included: his
verses for his own album (see Vol. IV. of this edition).

Jameson was Robert Jameson, to whom Hartley Coleridge addressed the
sonnets in the _London Magazine_ to which Lamb alludes in a previous
letter. He was the husband of Mrs. Jameson, author of _Sacred and
Legendary Art_, but the marriage was not happy. He lived in Chenies
Street.

"Future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.'s." A line from some verses written
by Lamb in more than one album. Probably originally intended for Emma
Isola's album. The passage runs, answering the question, "What is an
Album?"--

'Tis a Book kept by modern Young Ladies for show,
Of which their plain grandmothers nothing did know.
'Tis a medley of scraps, fine verse, and fine prose,
And some things not very like either, God knows.
The soft First Effusions of Beaux and of Belles,
Of future Lord Byrons and sweet L.E.L.'s.

L.E.L. was, of course, the unhappy Letitia Landon, a famous contributor
to the published albums.

"My tragi comedy." Still "The Wife's Trial." Kemble was Charles