leasures of Memory" was the first school present I made to Mrs. Moxon,
it had those nice wood-cuts; and I believe she keeps it still. Believe
me, that all the kindness you have shown to the husband of that
excellent person seems done unto myself. I have tried my hand at a
sonnet in "The Times." But the turn I gave it, though I hoped it would
not displease you, I thought might not be equally agreeable to your
artist. I met that dear old man at poor Henry's--with you--and again at
Cary's--and it was sublime to see him sit deaf and enjoy all that was
going on in mirth with the company. He reposed upon the many graceful,
many fantastic images he had created; with them he dined and took wine.

I have ventured at an antagonist copy of verses in "The Athenaeum" to
_him_, in which he is as everything and you as nothing. He is no lawyer
who cannot take two sides. But I am jealous of the combination of the
sister arts. Let them sparkle apart. What injury (short of the theatres)
did not Boydell's "Shakespeare Gallery" do me with Shakespeare?--to have
Opie's Shakespeare, Northcote's Shakespeare, light-headed Fuseli's
Shakespeare, heavy-headed Romney's Shakespeare, wooden-headed West's
Shakespeare (though he did the best in "Lear"), deaf-headed Reynolds's
Shakespeare, instead of my, and everybody's Shakespeare. To be tied down
to an authentic face of Juliet! To have Imogen's portrait! To confine
the illimitable! I like you and Stothard (you best), but "out upon this
half-faced fellowship." Sir, when I have read the book I may trouble
you, through Moxon, with some faint criticisms. It is not the
flatteringest compliment, in a letter to an author, to say you have not
read his book yet. But the devil of a reader he must be who prances
through it in five minutes, and no longer have I received the parcel. It
was a little tantalizing to me to receive a letter from Landor, _Gebir_
Landor, from Florence, to say he was just sitting down to read my
"Elia," just received, but the letter was to go out before the reading.
There are calamities in authorship which only authors know. I am going
to call on Moxon on Monday, if the throng of carriages in Dover Street
on the morn of publication do not barricade me out.

With many thanks, and most respectful remembrances to your sister,

Yours,

C. LAMB.

Have you seen Coleridge's happy exemplification in English of the
Ovidian elegiac metre?--

In the Hexameter rises the fountain's silver