is sister's illness, urges upon Hone the
advisability of applying to the Literary Fund for some relief, and
offers to support him in his appeal.]

LETTER 599

CHARLES LAMB TO Miss FRYER

Feb. 14, 1834.

Dear Miss Fryer,--Your letter found me just returned from keeping my
birthday (pretty innocent!) at Dover-street. I see them pretty often. I
have since had letters of business to write, or should have replied
earlier. In one word, be less uneasy about me; I bear my privations very
well; I am not in the depths of desolation, as heretofore. Your
admonitions are not lost upon me. Your kindness has sunk into my heart.
Have faith in me! It is no new thing for me to be left to my sister.
When she is not violent, her rambling chat is better to me than the
sense and sanity of this world. Her heart is obscured, not buried; it
breaks out occasionally; and one can discern a strong mind struggling
with the billows that have gone over it. I could be nowhere happier than
under the same roof with her. Her memory is unnaturally strong; and from
ages past, if we may so call the earliest records of our poor life, she
fetches thousands of names and things that never would have dawned upon
me again, and thousands from the ten years she lived before me. What
took place from early girlhood to her coming of age principally lives
again (every important thing and every trifle) in her brain with the
vividness of real presence. For twelve hours incessantly she will pour
out without intermission all her past life, forgetting nothing, pouring
out name after name to the Waldens as a dream; sense and nonsense;
truths and errors huddled together; a medley between inspiration and
possession. What things we are! I know you will bear with me, talking of
these things. It seems to ease me; for I have nobody to tell these
things to now. Emma, I see, has got a harp! and is learning to play. She
has framed her three Walton pictures, and pretty they look. That is a
book you should read; such sweet religion in it--next to Woolman's!
though the subject be baits and hooks, and worms, and fishes. She has my
copy at present to do two more from.

Very, very tired, I began this epistle, having been epistolising all the
morning, and very kindly would I end it, could I find adequate
expressions to your kindness. We did set our minds on seeing you in
spring. One of us will indubitably. But I am not skilled in almanac
learning, to know when spring precisely begi