venture a winter walk to Enfield tomorrow week (Sunday 3Oth) you will
find us much as usual; we intend a delicious quiet Christmas day, dull
and friendless, for we have not spirits for festivities. Pray
communicate the good news to the Hoods, and say I hope he is better. I
should be thankful for any of the books you mention, but I am so
apprehensive of their miscarriage by the stage,--at all events I want
none just now. Pray call and see Mrs. Lovekin, I heard she was ill; say
we shall be glad to see them some fine day after a week or so.

May I beg you to call upon Miss James, and say that we are quite well,
and that Mary hopes she will excuse her writing herself yet; she knows
that it is rather troublesome to her to write. We have rec'd her letter.
Farewell, till we meet.

Yours truly,

C. LAMB.

Enfield.

LETTER 445

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[No date. End of 1827.]

My dear B.--We are all pretty well again and comfortable, and I take a
first opportunity of sending the Adventures of Ulysses, hoping that
among us--Homer, Chapman, and _C'o_.--we shall afford you some pleasure.
I fear, it is out of print, if not, A.K. will accept it, with wishes it
were bigger; if another copy is not to be had, it reverts to me and my
heirs _for ever_. With it I send a trumpery book; to which, without my
knowledge, the Editor of the Bijoux has contributed Lucy's verses: I am
asham'd to ask her acceptance of the trash accompanying it. Adieu to
Albums--for a great while, I said when I came here, and had not been
fixed two days but my Landlord's daughter (not at the Pot house)
requested me to write in her female friend's, and in her own; if I go to
[blank space: something seems to be missing] thou art there also, O all
pervading ALBUM! All over the Leeward Islands, in Newfoundland, and the
Back Settlements, I understand there is no other reading. They haunt me.
I die of Albo-phobia!

["A trumpery book." I have not found it. Writing in the _Englishman's
Magazine_ in 1831, in a review of his own _Album Verses_, Lamb amplifies
his sentiments on albums (see Vol. I.).]

LETTER 446

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP

[January 9, 1828.]

Dear Allsop--I have been very poorly and nervous lately, but am
recovering sleep, &c. I do not invite or make engagements for particular
days; but I need not say how pleasant your dropping in _any_ Sunday
morn'g would be. Perhaps Jameson would accompany you. Pray beg him to
keep an