he worked too hard; banking all
day and writing poetry all night were too much for him. Lamb, however,
cheered up the dyspeptic poet. 'You are too much apprehensive about your
complaint,' he wrote. 'I know many that are always writing of it and
live on to a good old age. I knew a merry fellow--you partly know him,
too--who, when his medical adviser told him he had drunk all _that part_,
congratulated himself, now his liver was gone, that he should be the
longest liver of the two.' Southey wrote in a soberer vein. 'My friend,
go to bed early; and if you eat suppers, read afterwards, but never
compose, that you may lie down with a quiet intellect. There is an
intellectual as well as a religious peace of mind, and without the former
be assured there can be no health for a poet.'

At times Bernard Barton seems to have been troubled about money matters.
On one occasion he appears to have made up his mind to have done with
banking and devote himself to literature. 'Keep to your bank,' wrote
Lamb, 'and the bank will keep you. Trust not to the public: you may
hang, starve, drown yourself, for anything that worthy personage cares.
I bless every star that Providence, not seeing good to make me
independent, has seen it next good to settle me on the stable foundation
of Leadenhall. Sit down, good B. B., in the banking office. What! is
there not from six to eleven p.m. six days in the week? and is there not
all Sunday?' Fortunately for B. B., friends came to his rescue. A few
members of his Society, including some of the wealthier of his own
family, raised among them 1,200 pounds for his benefit. The scheme
originated with Joseph John Gurney, of Norwich, and in 1824 when the
money was collected, it was felt that 1,200 pounds was a great deal for a
poet to receive. Bernard Barton's daughter married a Suffolk gentleman,
well-to-do in the world, but the lady and gentleman had not congenial
minds, and parted almost as soon as the honeymoon was over.

B. B. was a great correspondent. As a banker's clerk, necessarily his
journeys were few and far between. Once or twice he visited Charles
Lamb. He once also met Southey at Thomas Clarkson's, at Playford Hall,
perhaps the most picturesque old house in East Anglia, where the latter
resided, and of which I have a distinct recollection, as, on the terrace
before the moat with which it was surrounded, I once saw the venerable
philanthropist and his grandchildren. Now and then