n for declining it, will you accept some verses
which I meditate to be addrest to you on your father, & prefixable to
your Life? Write me word that I may have 'em ready against I see you
some 10 days hence, when I calculate the House will be uninfected. Send
your mother's address.

If you are likely to be again at Cheshunt before that time, on second
thoughts, drop in here, & consult--

Yours,

C.L.

Not a line is yet written--so say, if I shall do 'em.

[This is the only letter extant to the younger Hazlitt, who was then
nearly twenty. William Hazlitt, the essayist, had died September 18,
1830. Lamb was at his bedside. The memoir of him, by his son, was
prefixed to the _Literary Remains_ in 1836, but no verses by Lamb
accompanied it. When this letter was last sold at Sotheby's in June,
1902, a copy of verses was attached beginning--

There lives at Winterslow a man of such
Rare talents and deep learning ...

in the handwriting of William Hazlitt. They bear more traces of being
Mary Lamb's work than her brother's.]

LETTER 538

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[P.M. October 24, 1831.]

To address an abdicated monarch is a nice point of breeding. To give him
his lost titles is to mock him; to withhold 'em is to wound him. But his
Minister who falls with him may be gracefully sympathetic. I do honestly
feel for your diminution of honors, and regret even the pleasing cares
which are part and parcel of greatness. Your magnanimous submission, and
the cheerful tone of your renunciation, in a Letter which, without
flattery, would have made an "ARTICLE," and which, rarely as I keep
letters, shall be preserved, comfort me a little. Will it please, or
plague you, to say that when your Parcel came I damned it, for my pen
was warming in my hand at a ludicrous description of a Landscape of an
R.A., which I calculated upon sending you to morrow, the last day you
gave me. Now any one calling in, or a letter coming, puts an end to my
writing for the day. Little did I think that the mandate had gone out,
so destructive to my occupation, so relieving to the apprehensions of
the whole body of R.A.'s. So you see I had not quitted the ship while a
plank was remaining.

To drop metaphors, I am sure you have done wisely. The
very spirit of your epistle speaks that you have a weight off
your mind. I have one on mine. The cash in hand, which,
as * * * * * * less truly says, burns in my pocket. I feel queer
a