xpanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken,
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

I sat gazing at the man who had looked on Keats in the flush of his
young genius, and wondered at my good fortune. As the living poet folded
up again the faded manuscript of the illustrious dead one, and laid it
reverently in its place, I felt grateful for the honor thus vouchsafed
to a wandering stranger in a foreign land, and wished that other and
worthier votaries of English letters might have been present to share
with me the boon of such an interview. Presently my hospitable friend,
still rummaging among the past, drew out a letter, which was the one,
he said, he had been looking after. "Cram it into your pocket," he
cried, "for I hear ---- coming down stairs, and perhaps she won't let
you carry it off!" The letter is addressed to B.W. Procter, Esq., 10
Lincoln's Inn, New Square. I give the entire epistle here just as it
stands in the original which Procter handed me that memorable May
morning. He told me that the law question raised in this epistle was a
sheer fabrication of Lamb's, gotten up by him to puzzle his young
correspondent, the conveyancer. The coolness referred to between himself
and Robinson and Talfourd, Procter said, was also a fiction invented by
Lamb to carry out his legal mystification.

"_Jan'y_ 19, 1829.

"My Dear Procter,--I am ashamed to have not taken the drift of your
pleasant letter, which I find to have been pure invention. But jokes
are not suspected in Boeotian Enfield. We are plain people, and our
talk is of corn, and cattle, and Waltham markets. Besides I was a
little out of sorts when I received it. The fact is, I am involved
in a case which has fretted me to death, and I have no reliance
except on you to extricate me. I am sure you will give me your best
legal advice, having no professional friend besides but Robinson and
Talfourd, with neither of whom at present I am on the best terms. My
brother's widow left a will, made during the lifetime of my brother,
in which I am named sole Executor, by which she bequ