ext meeting--may it be soon.

My Latin failing me, as you may infer from erasures above, there is only
this to add. Farewell, and be sure to give Mrs. Rickman my kind
remembrances.

C. LAMB.

Enfield, Chase Side, 4th Oct., 1828. I can't put this properly into
Latin. Dabam--what is it?

LETTER 462

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[P.M. October 11, 1828.]

A splendid edition of Bunyan's Pilgrim--why, the thought is enough to
turn one's moral stomach. His cockle hat and staff transformed to a
smart cockd beaver and a jemmy cane, his amice gray to the last Regent
Street cut, and his painful Palmer's pace to the modern swagger. Stop
thy friend's sacriligious hand. Nothing can be done for B. but to
reprint the old cuts in as homely but good a style as possible. The
Vanity Fair, and the pilgrims there--the silly soothness in his setting
out countenance--the Christian idiocy (in a good sense) of his
admiration of the Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains--the Lions so
truly Allegorical and remote from any similitude to Pidcock's. The great
head (the author's) capacious of dreams and similitudes dreaming in the
dungeon. Perhaps you don't know _my_ edition, what I had when a child:
if you do, can you bear new designs from--Martin, enameld into copper or
silver plate by--Heath, accompanied with verses from Mrs. Heman's pen O
how unlike his own--

Wouldst thou divert thyself from melancholy?
Wouldst thou be pleasant, yet be far from folly?
Wouldst thou read riddles and their explanation?
Or else be drowned in thy contemplation?
Dost thou love picking meat? or wouldst thou see
A man i' th' clouds, and hear him speak to thee?
Wouldst thou be in a dream, and yet not sleep?
Or wouldst thou in a moment laugh and weep?
Or wouldst thou lose thyself, and catch no harm,
And find thyself again without a charm?
Wouldst read _thyself_, and read thou knowst not what,
And yet know whether thou art blest or not
By reading the same lines? O then come hither,
And lay my book, thy head and heart together.

JOHN BUNYAN.

Shew me such poetry in any of the 15 forthcoming combinations of show
and emptiness, yclept Annuals. Let me whisper in your ear that wholesome
sacramental bread is not more nutritious than papistical wafer stuff,
than these (to head and heart) exceed the visual frippery of Mitford's
Salamander G