!

cottage, where his wife kindly nurtured it till it grew up a goodly personage. How this babe prospered afterwards, let proud London tell. This was that famous Sir Thomas Gresham, who was the chiefest of her merchants, the richest, the wisest. Witness his many goodly vessels on the Thames, freighted with costly merchandise, jewels from Ind, and pearls for courtly dames, and silks of Samarcand. And witness, more than all, that stately Bourse (or Exchange) which he caused to be built, a mart for merchants from east and west, whose graceful summit still bears, in token of the fairies' favours, his chosen crest, the grasshopper. And, like the grasshopper, may it please you, great king, to suffer us also to live, partakers of the green earth!"

The fairy had scarce ended his plea, when a shrill cry, not unlike the grasshopper's, was heard. Poor Puck-or Robin Goodfellow, as he is sometimes called-had recovered a little from his first fright, and, in one of his mad freaks, had perched upon the beard of old Time, which was flowing, ample, and majestic; and was amusing himself with plucking at a hair, which was indeed so massy, that it seemed to him that he was removing some huge beam of timber, rather than a hair; which Time by some ill chance perceiving, snatched up the impish mischief with his great hand, and asked what it was.

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"Alas!" quoth Puck, a little random elf am I, born in one of Nature's sports; a very weed, created for the simple, sweet enjoyment of myself, but for no other purpose, worth, or need, that ever I could learn. 'Tis I that bob the angler's idle cork, till the patient man is ready to breathe a curse. I steal the morsel from the gossip's fork, or stop the sneezing chanter in mid psalm; and when an infant has been born with hard or homely features, mothers say changed the child at nurse: but to fulfil any graver purpose I have not wit enough, and hardly the will. I am a pinch of lively dust to frisk upon the wind: a tear would make a puddle of me; and so I tickle myself with the lightest straw, and shun all griefs that might make me stagnant. This is my small philosophy."

I

Then Time, dropping him on the ground, as a thing too inconsiderable for his vengeance, grasped fast his mighty scythe and now, not Puck alone, but the whole state of fairies, had gone to inevitable wreck and destruction, had not a timely apparition interposed, at whose boldness Time was astounded; for he came not with the habit or the forces of a deity, who alone might cope with Time, but as a simple mortal, clad as you might see a forester that hûnts after wild conies by the cold moonshine; or a stalker of stray deer, stealthy and bold. But by the golden lustre in his eye, and the passionate wanness in his cheek, and by the fair and ample space of his forehead, which seemed a palace framed for the habitation of all glorious thoughts, he knew that this was his great rival, who had power given him to rescue whatsoever victims Time should clutch, and to cause them to live for ever in his immortal verse. And, muftering the name of Shakspeare, Time spread his roc-like wings, and fled the controlling presence; and the liberated court of the fairies, with Titania at their head, flocked around the gentle ghost, giving him thanks, nodding to him, and doing him courtesies, who had crowned them henceforth with a permanent existence, to live in the minds of men, while verse shall have power to charm, or midsummer moons shall brighten.

What particular endearments passed between the fairies and their poet, passes my pencil to delineate; but, if you are curious to be informed, I must refer you, gentle reader, to the “Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," a most agreeable poem lately put forth by my friend Thomas Hood; of the first half of which the above is nothing but a meagre and harsh prose abstract. Farewell!

The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.

I

out gridt & as havory edt a mud zniqqorb „omiT uofT yidqia and deal beqzerg,somesgraz zní tot eldarabritoonİ to state olodw od A DEATH-BED,wo bas Sift 792 bed reroutesb bas do9rw eldstizout of snog bed „-sirist ST 229miNA LETTER TO RHESQOF Bomit & con 290 vt out to tids font d'rg ton sargy of rot; boberotze zaw CALLED you this morning, and found that you were gone to visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like errand. Poor N. R. has lain dying now for almost a week; such is the penalty we pay for having enjoyed through life a strong constitution. Whether he knew me or not, I know not, or whether he saw me through his poor glazed eyes; but the group I saw about him I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or about it, were assembled his wife, their two daughters, and poor deaf Robert, looking doubly stupified. There they were, and seemed to have been sitting all the week. I could only reach out a band to Mrs. R. Speaking was impossible in that mute chamber. By this time it must be all over with him. In him I have a loss the world cannot make up. He was my friend, and my father's friend, for all the life that I e life that I can remember. I seem to have made foolish friendships since. Those are the friendships, which outlast a second generation. Old as I am getting, in his eyes I was still the child he knew me. To the last he called me Jemmy. I have none to call me Jemmy now. He

e was the last link that bound me to B You are but of yesterday. In him I seem to have lost the old plainness of manners and singleness of heart. Lettered he was not; his reading scarcely exceeded the obituary of the old "Gentleman's Magazine," to which he has never failed of having recourse for these last fifty years. Yet there e was the pride of literature about him from that slender perusal; and, moreover, from his office of archive-keeper to your ancient city, in which he must needs pick up some equivocal Latin; which, among his less literary friends, assumed the air of a very pleasant pedantry. Can I forget the erudite look with which, having tried to puzzle out the text of a blacklettered Chaucer in your Corporation Library, to which he was a sort of librarian, he gave it up with this consolatory

reflection " Jemmy," said he, "I do not know what you find in these very old books, but I observe there is a deal of very indifferent spelling in them." His jokes (for he had some) are ended; but they were old perennials, staple, and always as good as new. He had one song, that spake of the "flat bottoms of our foes coming over in darkness," and alluded to a threatened invasion, many years since blown over; this he reserved to be sung on Christmas night, which we always passed with him, and he sang it with the freshness of an impending event. How his eyes would sparkle when he came to the passage :—

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'We'll still make 'em run, and we'll still make 'em sweat,
In spite of the devil and Brussels' Gazette!"

What is the "Brussels' Gazette" now? I cry, while I endite these trifles. His poor girls, who are, I believe, compact of solid goodness, will have to receive their afflicted mother at an unsuccessful home in a petty village in

-shire, where for years they have been struggling to raise a girls' school with no effect. Poor deaf Robert (and the less hopeful for being so) is thrown upon a deaf world, without the comfort to his father on his death-bed of knowing him provided for. They are left almost provisionless. Some life assurance there is; but, I fear, not exceeding

Their hopes must be from your corporation, which their father has served for fifty years. Who or what are your leading members now, I know not. Is there any, to whom, without impertinence, you can represent the true circumstances of the family? You cannot say good enough poor R. and his poor wife.

of

you can.

Oblige me and the dead, if

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APPENDIX.

[In these Essays Charles Lamb assumed the name of an Italian, who was one of his colleagues in the South Sea House.]

SOUTH SEA HOUSE.

Mr. John Lamb, the Essayist's brother, was a clerk in the South Sea House. His passion for picture collecting is recorded in the admirable sketch of him (as James Elia) in "My Relations."

OXFORD IN THE VACATION.

"G. D.," Mr. George Dyer, author of a "History of the University and Colleges of Cambridge.” The passage in brackets was suppressed at the earnest remonstrance of Dyer, who complained that it conveyed quite a false impression of the treatment he had received from his various employers. Mr. Procter vouches for the truth of the anecdote about Dyer's calling at "M- -'s, in Bedford Square;" another example of his extreme absence of mind will be found in a later Essay, "Amicus Redivivus."

To Elia's confession of his aversion to MSS., on page 13, line 5, was appended the following note in the original Essay:

There is something to me repugnant at any time in written hand. The text never seems determinate. Print settles it. I had thought of the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty-as springing up with all its parts absolute-till, in an evil hour, I was shown the original written copy of it, together with the other minor poems of its author, in the library of Trinity, kept like some treasure, to be proud of. I wish they had thrown them in the Cam, or sent them after the latter cantos of Spenser, into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me to see the fine things in their ore! interlined, corrected! as if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at pleasure! as if they might have been otherwise, and just as good! as if inspiration were made, up of parts, and those fluctuating, successive, indifferent!