ays. In "Rosamund Gray"
(see Vol. I.) Lamb describes the Blakesware wilderness. See also notes
to "The Last Peach," Vol. I., to "Dream-Children" in this volume, and
to "Going or Gone," Vol. IV.

Lamb has other references to Blakesware and the irrevocability of his
happiness there as a child, in his letters. Writing to Southey on
October 31, 1799, he says:--"Dear Southey,--I have but just got
your letter, being returned from Herts, where I have passed a few
red-letter days with much pleasure. I would describe the county to
you, as you have done by Devonshire; but alas! I am a poor pen at that
same. I could tell you of an old house with a tapestry bedroom, the
'Judgment of Solomon' composing one pannel, and 'Actaeon spying Diana
naked' the other. I could tell of an old marble hall, with Hogarth's
prints, and the Roman Caesars in marble hung round. I could tell of
a _wilderness_, and of a village church, and where the bones of my
honoured grandam lie; but there are feelings which refuse to be
translated, sulky aborigines, which will not be naturalised in another
soil. Of this nature are old family faces, and scenes of infancy."

And again, to Bernard Barton, in August, 1827:--"You have well
described your old-fashioned grand paternall Hall. Is it not odd that
every one's earliest recollections are of some such place. I had my
Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the 'London'). Nothing fills a child's mind
like a large old Mansion ... better if un- or partially-occupied;
peopled with the spirits of deceased members of the County and
Justices of the Quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled solitude of
one, with my feelings at 7 years old!

"Those marble busts of the Emperors, they seem'd as if they were to
stand for ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in
that old Marble Hall, and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity
was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are
toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old Dwelling and
its princely gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that chirping about
the grounds escaped his scythe only by my littleness. Ev'n now he is
whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps.
Well!"

Writing to Barton in August, 1824, concerning the present essay, Lamb
describes it as a "futile effort ... 'wrung from me with slow pain'."

Page 175, line 15 from foot. _Mrs. Battle_. There was a haunted room
at Blakesware, but the suggestion that