t up a wall most preposterously before his small dwelling, which,
with the circumstance of his taking several panes of glass out of
bedroom windows (for air), causeth his neighbors to speculate strangely
on the state of the good man's pericranicks. Plainly, he lives under the
reputation of being deranged. George does not mind this circumstance; he
rather likes him the better for it. The Doctor, in his pursuits, joins
agricultural to poetical science, and has set George's brains mad about
the old Scotch writers, Barbour, Douglas's AEneid, Blind Harry, etc. We
returned home in a return postchaise (having dined with the Doctor); and
George kept wondering and wondering, for eight or nine turnpike miles,
what was the name, and striving to recollect the name, of a poet
anterior to Barbour. I begged to know what was remaining of his works.
"There is nothing _extant_ of his works, sir; but by all accounts he
seems to have been a fine genius!" This fine genius, without anything to
show for it or any title beyond George's courtesy, without even a name,
and Barbour and Douglas and Blind Harry now are the predominant sounds
in George's pia mater, and their buzzings exclude politics, criticism,
and algebra,--the late lords of that illustrious lumber-room. Mark, he
has never read any of these bucks, but is impatient till he reads them
_all_, at the Doctor's suggestion. Poor Dyer! his friends should be
careful what sparks they let fall into such inflammable matter.

Could I have my will of the heathen, I would lock him up from all access
of new ideas; I would exclude all critics that would not swear me first
(upon their Virgil) that they would feed him with nothing but the old,
safe, familiar notions and sounds (the rightful aborigines of his
brain),--Gray, Akenside, and Mason. In these sounds, reiterated as often
as possible, there could be nothing painful, nothing distracting.

God bless me, here are the birds, smoking hot!

All that is gross and unspiritual in me rises at the sight!

Avaunt friendship and all memory of absent friends!

C. LAMB.

XXVII.

TO COLERIDGE.

_August_ 26, 1800.

George Dyer is the only literary character I am happily acquainted with.
The oftener I see him, the more deeply I admire him. He is goodness
itself. If I could but calculate the precise date of his death, I would
write a novel on purpose to make George the hero. I could hit him off
to a hair.

George brought a Dr. Anderson [1] to