Göttingen, any rays of illumination, in vain to be derived from the home growth of our English halls and colleges. Finally wishing, learned sir, that you may see Schiller, and swing in a wood (vide poems), and sit upon a tun, and eat fat hams of Westphalia, I remain Your friend and docile pupil to instruct, CHARLES LAMB. TO THOMAS HOOD.* AND what dost thou at the Priory? Cucullus non facit Monachum. English me that, and challenge old Lignum Janua to make a better. My old New River has presented no extraordinary novelties lately; but there Hope sits every day, speculating upon traditionary gudgeons. I think she has taken the fisheries. I now know the reason why our forefathers were denominated East and West Angles. Yet is there no lack of spawn; for I wash my hands in fishets that come through the pump every morning thick as motelings,-little things that perish untimely, and never taste the brook. You do not tell me of those romantic land bays that be as thou goest to Lover's Seat: neither of that little churchling in the midst of a wood (in the opposite direction, nine furlongs from the town), that seems dropped by the Angel that was tired of carrying two packages; marry, with the other he made shift to pick his flight to Loretto. Inquire out, and see my little Protestant Loretto. It stands apart from trace of human habitation; yet hath it pulpit, reading-desk, and trim front of massiest marble, as if Robinson Crusoe had reared it to * Then "unrheumatizing himself" at Hastings. soothe himself with old church-going images. I forget its Christian name, and what she-saint was its gossip. You should also go to No. 13, Standgate Street; to a Baker, who has the finest collection of marine monsters in ten sea-counties,-sea-dragons, polypi, mer-people, most fantastic. You have only to name the old gentleman in black (not the Devil) that lodged with him a week (he'll remember) last July, and he will show courtesy. He is by far the foremost of the savans. His wife is the funniest thwarting little animal! They are decidedly the Lions of green Hastings. Well, I have made an end of my say. My epistolary time is gone by when I could have scribbled as long (I will not say as agreeable) as thine was to both of us. I am dwindled to notes and letterets. But, in good earnest, I shall be most happy to hail thy return to the waters of old Sir Hugh. There is nothing like inland murmurs, fresh ripples, and our native minnows. "He sang in meads, how sweet the brooklets ran, I design to give up smoking; but I have not yet fixed upon the equivalent vice. I must have quid pro quo; or quo pro quid, as Tom Woodgate would correct me. My service to him. C. L.* * "The letter came to hand too late for me to hunt the 'Lions;' but on a subsequent visit to the same Cinque Port with my wife, though we verified the little Loretto, we could not find the Baker, or even his man, howbeit we tried at every shop that had the least sign of bakery or cakery in its window. The whole was a batch of fancy bread,- -one of those fictions which the writer was apt to pass off upon his friends."—HOOD. TO THE SAME. DEAR LAMB,-You are an impudent varlet; but I will keep your secret. We dine at Ayrton's on Thursday, and shall try to find Sarah and her two spare beds for that night only. Miss M. and her tragedy may be dished: so may not you and your rib. Health attend you. ENFIELD. Yours, Miss Bridget Hood sends love.* T. HOOD, Esq. TO LEIGH HUNT. ILLUSTREZZIMO SIGNOR,-I have obeyed your mandate to a tittle. I accompany this with a volume; but what have you done with the first I sent you? Have you swapped it with some lazzaroni for macaroni, or pledged it with a gondolier for a passage? Peradventuri the Cardinal Gonsalvi took a fancy to it; his Eminence has done my Nearness an honour. 'Tis but a step to the Vatican. As you judge, my works do not enrich the workman; but I get vat I can for 'em. They keep dragging me on, a poor, worn mill-horse, in the eternal round of the damned * The secret alluded to in this "notelet" was, that the article in the Gem, entitled The Widow, and published under Lamb's well-known signature, was written by Hood. Of course, the reader will see by the subscription, T. Hood, Esq., that the letter was not written by the author of the Song of the Shirt. Miss Bridget Hood is Mary Lamb; and the writer of the epistle is Charles Lamb himself.-EDITOR. magazine; but 'tis they are blind, not I. Colburn (where I recognize with delight the gay W. Honeycomb renovated) hath the ascendancy.* I was with the Novellos last week. They have a large, cheap house and garden, with a dainty library (magnificent) without books; but, what will make you bless yourself (I am too old for wonder), something has touched the right organ in Vincentio at last. He attends a Wesleyan chapel on Kingsland Green. He at first tried to laugh it off-he only went for the singing; but the cloven foot-I retract-the lamb's trotters are at length apparent. Mary Isabella attributes it to a lightness induced by his headaches; but I think I see in it a less accidental influence. Mr. Clark is at perfect staggers! the whole fabric of his infidelity is shaken. He has no one to join him in his horseinsults and indecent obstreperousnesses against Christianity; for Holmes (the bonny Holmes) is gone to Salisbury to be organist, and Isabella and the Clark make but a feeble quorum. The children have all neat little clasped prayer-books; and I have laid out seven shillings and eight pence in Watts's Hymns for Christmas presents for them. The eldest girl alone holds out. She has been at Boulogne, skirting upon the vast focus of Atheism, and imported bad principles in patois French. But the strongholds are crumbling. N. appears as yet to have but a confused notion of the Atonement. It makes him giddy, he says, to think much about it; but such giddiness is spiritual sobriety. Well, Byron is gone; and is now the best poet in England. Fill up the gap to your fancy. Barry Cornwall has at last carried the pretty A. S. They are just in the A series of pleasant, gossiping articles by Leigh Hunt, called The Family Journal, and pretended to be written by a descendant of Mr. Spectator's friend, Will Honeycomb.EDITOR. treacle-moon. Hope it won't clog his wings (gaum, we used to say at school.) Mary, my sister, has worn me out with eight weeks' cold and toothache, her average complement in the Winter; and it will not go away. She is otherwise well, and reads novels all day long. She has had an exempt year, a good year; for which, forgetting the minor calamity, she and I are most thankful. Alsager is in a flourishing house, with wife and children about him, in Mecklenburg Square-almost too fine to visit. Baron Field is come home from Sydney; but as yet I can hear no tidings of a pension. He is plump and friendly; his wife, really a very superior woman. He resumes the bar. I have got acquainted with Mr. Irving, the Scotch preacher, whose fame must have reached you. He is an humble disciple at the foot of Gamaliel S. T. C. Judge how his own sectarists must stare, when I tell you he has dedicated a book to S. T. C., acknowledging to have learnt more of the nature of faith, Christianity, and Christian Church, from him than from all the men he ever conversed with! He is a most amiable, sincere, modest man in a room, this Boanerges in the temple. Mrs. Montague told him the dedication would do him no good. "That shall be a reason for doing it," was his answer. Judge, now, whether this man be a quack. Dear H., take this imperfect notelet for a letter it looks so much the more like conversing on nearer terms. Love to all the Hunts, old friend Thornton, and all. Yours ever, : C. LAMB. TO MRS. SHELLEY. ENFIELD, July 26, 1827. DEAR MRS. SHELLEY,-At the risk of throwing away some fine thoughts, I must write to say how |