Would that I, thrice happy man,
In as spotless garb might rise,
Light as she will climb the skies,
Leaving the dull earth behind,
In a car more swift than wind.
All her errors, all her failings,
(Many they were not) and ailings,
Sleep secure from Envy's railings.

Here should come an undated note from Lamb to Basil Montagu, in which
Lamb asks for help for Hone in his Coffee-House. "If you can help a
worthy man you will have _two worthy men_ obliged to you." Hone, having
fallen upon bad times, Lamb helped in the scheme to establish him in the
Grasshopper Coffee-House, at 13 Gracechurch Street (see next letter).]

LETTER 514

CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

May 10, 1830.

Dear Southey,--My friend Hone, whom you would like _for a friend_, I
found deeply impressed with your generous notice of him in your
beautiful "Life of Bunyan," which I am just now full of. He has written
to you for leave to publish a certain good-natured letter. I write not
this to enforce his request, for we are fully aware that the refusal of
such publication would be quite consistent with all that is good in your
character. Neither he nor I expect it from you, nor exact it; but if you
would consent to it, you would have me obliged by it, as well as him. He
is just now in a critical situation: kind friends have opened a
coffee-house for him in the City, but their means have not extended to
the purchase of coffee-pots, credit for Reviews, newspapers, and other
paraphernalia. So I am sitting in the skeleton of a possible divan. What
right I have to interfere, you best know. Look on me as a dog who went
once temporarily insane, and bit you, and now begs for a crust. Will you
set your wits to a dog?

Our object is to open a subscription, which my friends of the "Times"
are most willing to forward for him, but think that a leave from you to
publish would aid it.

But not an atom of respect or kindness will or shall it abate in either
of us if you decline it. Have this strongly in your mind.

Those "Every-Day" and "Table" Books will be a treasure a hundred years
hence; but they have failed to make Hone's fortune.

Here his wife and all his children are about me, gaping for coffee
customers; but how should they come in, seeing no pot boiling!

Enough of Hone. I saw Coleridge a day or two since. He has had some
severe a