y current,
In the Pentameter aye falling in melody down.

My sister is papering up the book--careful soul!

[Moxon published a superb edition of Rogers' _Poems_ illustrated by
Turner and Stothard. Lamb had received an advance copy. The sonnet to
Rogers in _The Times_ was printed on December 13, 1833. It ran thus:--

TO SAMUEL ROGERS, ESQ., ON THE NEW EDITION OF
HIS "PLEASURES OF MEMORY"

When thy gay book hath paid its proud devoirs,
Poetic friend, and fed with luxury
The eye of pampered aristocracy
In glittering drawing-rooms and gilt boudoirs,
O'erlaid with comments of pictorial art,
However rich and rare, yet nothing leaving
Of healthful action to the soul-conceiving
Of the true reader--yet a nobler part
Awaits thy work, already classic styled.
Cheap-clad, accessible, in homeliest show
The modest beauty through the land shall go
From year to year, and render life more mild;
Refinement to the poor man's hearth shall give,
And in the moral heart of England live.

C. LAMB.

Thomas Stothard, then in his seventy-ninth year, Lamb had met at Henry
Rogers', who had died at Christmas, 1832. The following was the copy of
verses printed in _The Athenaeum_, December 21, 1833 ("that most
romantic tale" was _Peter Wilkins_):--

TO T. STOTHARD, ESQ.

_On his Illustrations of the Poems of Mr. Rogers_

Consummate Artist, whose undying name
With classic Rogers shall go down to fame,
Be this thy crowning work! In my young days
How often have I with a child's fond gaze
Pored on the pictured wonders thou hadst done:
Clarissa mournful, and prim Grandison!
All Fielding's, Smollett's heroes, rose to view;
I saw, and I believed the phantoms true.
But, above all, that most romantic tale
Did o'er my raw credulity prevail,
Where Glums and Gawries wear mysterious things,
That serve at once for jackets and for wings.
Age, that enfeebles other men's designs,
But heightens thine, and thy free draught refines.
In several ways distinct you make us feel--
_Graceful_ as Raphael, as Watteau _genteel_.
Your lights and shades, as Titianesque, we praise;
And warmly wish you Titian's length of days.

"Short of the theatres." The injury done by the theatres is of course
the s