e streets and
shops entertaining ever, else I feel as in a desert, and get me home to
my cave." Once a month, he adds, he passes a day with Cary at the
Museum. When Mary was getting better in the previous year she would read
all the auctioneers' advertisements on the walk. "These are _my_
Play-bills," she said. "I walk 9 or 10 miles a day, always up the road,
dear Londonwards." Addressed to Manning at Puckeridge.

Manning lived on, an eccentric recluse, until 1840.

Here perhaps should come the following melancholy letter to Talfourd,
which Mr. Dobell permits me to print:--]

LETTER 602

CHARLES LAMB TO T.N. TALFOURD

[No date. Early 1834?]

D'r T.--[1]Moxon & Knowles are coming to Enfield on Sunday _afternoon_.
My poor shaken head cannot at present let me ask any dinner company; for
two drinkings in a day, which must ensue, would incapacity me. I am very
poorly. They can only get an Edmont'n stage, from which village 'tis but
a 2 miles walk, & I have only _inn beds_ to offer. _Pray_, join 'em if
you can. Our first morning stage to London is 1/2 past 8. If that won't
suit your avocations, arrange with Ryle (or without him)--but how can I
separate him morally?--logically and legally, poetically and critically
I can,--from you? No disparagement (for a better Christian exists
not)--well arrange _cum_ or _absque illo_--this is latin-- the first
Sunday you can, _morning_.

I am poorly, but I always am on these occasions, a week or two. Then I
get sober,--I mean less insober. Yours till death; you are mine _after_.
Don't mind a touch of pathos. Love to Mrs. Talfourd.

The Edmonton stages come almost every hour from Snow Hill.

[Footnote 1: Erratum, for M. & K. read K. & M. Booksellers _after_
Authors.]

[Ryle, as I have already said, was Lamb's executor, with Talfourd. Hence
the phrase to Talfourd, "you are mine after."]

LETTER 603

(_Fragment_)

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE

[No date. End of June, 1834.]

We heard the Music in the Abbey at Winchmore Hill! and the notes were
incomparably soften'd by the distance. Novello's chromatics were
distinctly audible. Clara was faulty in B flat. Otherwise she sang like
an angel. The trombone, and Beethoven's walzes, were the best. Who
played the oboe?

[The letter refers to the performance of Handel's "Creation" at the
Musical Festival in Westminster Abbey on June 24, 1834, when Novello and
Atwood were the organists, and Clara Novello one o