ighted clinging to its Grandam's knees
With eager wond'ring and perturb'd delight
Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees
Mutter'd to wretch by necromantic spell;
Or of those hags, who at the witching time
Of murky midnight ride the air sublime,
And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell:
Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear
More gentle starts, to hear the Beldame tell
Of pretty babes, that lov'd each other dear,
Murder'd by cruel Uncle's mandate fell:
Ev'n such the shiv'ring joys thy tones impart,
Ev'n so thou, SIDDONS! meltest my sad heart!

* * * * *

Page 115. DREAM-CHILDREN.

_London Magazine_, January, 1822.

John Lamb died on October 26, 1821, leaving all his property to his
brother. Charles was greatly upset by his loss. Writing to Wordsworth
in March, 1822, he said: "We are pretty well save colds and
rheumatics, and a certain deadness to every thing, which I think I may
date from poor John's Loss.... Deaths over-set one, and put one out
long after the recent grief." (His friend Captain Burney died in the
same month.) Lamb probably began "Dream-Children,"--in some ways,
I think, his most perfect prose work--almost immediately upon his
brother's death. The essay "My Relations" may be taken in connection
with this as completing the picture of John Lamb. His lameness was
caused by the fall of a stone in 1796, but I doubt if the leg were
really amputated.

The description in this essay of Blakesware, the seat of the Plumers,
is supplemented by the essay entitled "Blakesmoor in H----shire."
Except that Lamb substitutes Norfolk for the nearer county, the
description is accurate; it is even true that there is a legend in the
Plumer family concerning the mysterious death of two children and the
loss of the baronetcy thereby--Sir Walter Plumer, who died in the
seventeenth century, being the last to hold the title. In his poem
"The Grandame" (see Vol. IV.), Lamb refers to Mrs. Field's garrulous
tongue and her joy in recounting the oft-told tale; and it may be to
his early associations with the old story that his great affection
for Morton's play, "The Children in the Wood," which he so often
commended--particularly with Miss Kelly in the caste--was due. The
actual legend of the children in the wood belongs, however, to
Norfolk.

William Plumer's newer and more fashionable mansion was at Gilston,
which is not in the adjoining county, but also