tural illustrations come more naturally when by _them_ we expound
mental operations than when we deduce from natural objects similes of
the mind's workings. The miser's struggle thus compared is a beautiful
image. But the storm and clouds do not inversely so readily suggest the
miser.

160. [Havock and Wrath, his maniac bride,
Wheel o'er the conflict, &c.]

These personified gentry I think are not in taste. Besides, Fear has
been pallid any time these 2,000 years. It is mixing the style of
Aeschylus and the _Last Minstrel_.

175. Bracy is a good rough vocative. No better suggests itself, unless
Grim, Baron Grimm, or Grimoald, which is Saxon, or Grimbald! Tracy would
obviate your objection [that the name Bracy occurs in _Ivanhoe_] but
Bracy is stronger.

231. [The frown of night
Conceals him, and bewrays their sight.]

Betrays. The other has an _unlucky association_.

243. [The glinting moon's half-shrouded ray.]

Why "glinting," Scotch, when "glancing" is English?

421. [Then solemnly the monk did say,
(The Abbot of Saint Mary's gray,)
The leman of a wanton youth
Perhaps may gain her father's _ruth_,
But _never_ on his injured breast
May lie, caressing and caressed.
Bethink you of the vow you made
When your light daughter, all distraught,
From yonder slaughter-plain was brought,
That if in some secluded cell
She might till death securely dwell,
The house of God should share her wealth.]

Holy abbots surely never so undisguisedly blurted out their secular
aims.

I think there is so much of this kind of poetry, that it would not be
_very taking_, but it is well worthy of pleasing a private circle. One
blemish runs thro', the perpetual accompaniment of natural images.
Seasons of the year, times of day, phases of the moon, phenomena of
flowers, are quite as much your _dramatis personae_ as the warriors and
the ladies. This last part is as good as what precedes.

LETTER 607

CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE

[No date. End of July, 1834.]

Dear Sir, I am totally incapable of doing what you suggest at present,
and think it right to tell you so _without delay_. It would shock me,
who am shocked enough already, to sit down to _write_ about it. I have
no letters of poor C. By and bye what scraps I have shall be yours.