re very
anxious for another letter.

You say we have forgot your powers of being serviceable to us. _That_ we
never shall. I do not know what I should do without you when I want a
little commission. Now then. There are left at Miss Buffam's, the Tales
of the Castle, and certain vols. Retrospective Review. The first should
be conveyd to Novello's, and the Reviews should be taken to Talfourd's
office, ground floor, East side, Elm Court, Middle Temple, to whom I
should have written, but my spirits are wretched. It is quite an effort
to write this. So, with the _Life_, I have cut you out 3 Pieces of
service. What can I do for you here, but hope to see you very soon, and
think of you with most kindness. I fear tomorrow, between rains and
snows, it would be impossible to expect you, but do not let a
practicable Sunday pass. We are always at home!

Mary joins in remembrances to your sister, whom we hope to see in any
fine-ish weather, when she'll venture.

Remember us to Allsop, and all the dead people--to whom, and to London,
we seem dead.

["The _Life_." The Life which every one was then reading was Moore's
_Life of Byron_.

"George Dyer's." The explanation is that years before, in his _Poems_,
1801, Dyer had written in a piece called "The Poet's Fate"--

And Rogers, if he shares the town's regard,
Was first a banker ere he rose a bard.

In the second edition Dyer altered this to--

And Darwin, if he share the town's regard,
Was first a doctor ere he rose a bard.

Lamb notes the alteration in his copy of the second edition, now in the
British Museum. In 1828-1829 appeared _Parriana_, by Edmund Henry
Barker, which quoted the couplet in its original form, to Dyer's
distress.

_Tales of the Castle_. By the Countess de Genlis. Translated by Thomas
Holcroft]

LETTER 530

CHARLES LAMB TO GEORGE DYER

Feb. 22nd, 1831.

Dear Dyer,--Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Rogers's friends, are perfectly assured,
that you never intended any harm by an innocent couplet, and that in the
revivification of it by blundering Barker you had no hand whatever. To
imagine that, at this time of day, Rogers broods over a fantastic
expression of more than thirty years' standing, would be to suppose him
indulging his "Pleasures of Memory" with a vengeance. You never penned a
line which for its own sake you need (dying) wish to blot. You mistake
your heart if you think you _can_ write a lampoon. Your whips are r