oet: though I know well such epithet befits orators
rather than poets--and yet, Most eloquent!

"There has been staying with us this while past at our country seat of
Enfield to wit, the future attorney, the illustrious Martin Burney,
taking his leisure, flying for a space from his nominal occupations, and
his office empty of clients. He--that is, Martin--begs and entreats of
you that if (heaven send it so!) by some stroke of fortune, in his
absence there should arrive a belated client, you would inform him by
letter here. Do you understand? or must I write in barbarous English to
a scholar like you?

"If an estate in freehold is given to an ancestor, and if in the same
deed directly or indirectly the gift is made to the heir or heirs of the
body of the said ancestor, these last words have the force of Limitation
not of Purchase.

"I have spoken.

CHARLES LAMB."

The last passage was copied probably direct from some law book of
Burney's, and is unintelligible except to students of law-Latin.]

LETTER 477

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE

Edmonton, Feb. 2, 1829.

Dear Cowden,--Your books are as the gushing of streams in a desert. By
the way, you have sent no autobiographies. Your letter seems to imply
you had. Nor do I want any. Cowden, they are of the books which I give
away. What damn'd Unitarian skewer-soul'd things the general biographies
turn out. Rank and Talent you shall have when Mrs. May has done with
'em. Mary likes Mrs. Bedinfield much. For me I read nothing but
Astrea--it has turn'd my brain--I go about with a switch turn'd up at
the end for a crook; and Lambs being too old, the butcher tells me, my
cat follows me in a green ribband. Becky and her cousin are getting
pastoral dresses, and then we shall all four go about Arcadizing. O
cruel Shepherdess! Inconstant yet fair, and more inconstant for being
fair! Her gold ringlets fell in a disorder superior to order!

Come and join us.

I am called the Black Shepherd--you shall be Cowden with the Tuft.

Prosaically, we shall be glad to have you both,--or any two of you--drop
in by surprise some Saturday night. This must go off.

Loves to Vittoria. C.L.

["Rank and Talent"-a novel by W.P. Scargill, 1829.

Mrs. Bedinfield wrote _Longhollow: a Country Tale_, 1829.

"Astrea." Probably the romance by Honore D'Urfe.

"Cowden with the Tuft." So called from his hair, and from _Riquet with
the Tuft_, the fairy tale. We read in the Cowden C