have offered my resignation, and it is neither
accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this fearful suspence.
Guess what an absorbing stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the
existence of friends present or absent. The E.I. Directors alone can be
that thing to me--or not.--

I have just learn'd that nothing will be decided this week. Why the
next? Why any week? It has fretted me into an itch of the fingers, I rub
'em against Paper and write to you, rather than not allay this Scorbuta.

While I can write, let me adjure you to have no doubts of Irving. Let
Mr. Mitford drop his disrespect. Irving has prefixed a dedication (of a
Missionary Subject 1st part) to Coleridge, the most beautiful cordial
and sincere. He there acknowledges his obligation to S.T.C. for his
knowledge of Gospel truths, the nature of a Xtian Church, etc., to the
talk of S.T.C. (at whose Gamaliel feet he sits weekly) [more] than to
that of all the men living. This from him--The great dandled and petted
Sectarian--to a religious character so equivocal in the world's Eye as
that of S.T.C., so foreign to the Kirk's estimate!--Can this man be a
Quack? The language is as affecting as the Spirit of the Dedication.
Some friend told him, "This dedication will do you no Good," _i.e._ not
in the world's repute, or with your own People. "That is a reason for
doing it," quoth Irving.

I am thoroughly pleased with him. He is firm, outspeaking, intrepid--and
docile as a pupil of Pythagoras.

You must like him.

Yours, in tremors of painful hope,

C. LAMB.

[In the first paragraphs Lamb refers to the great question of his
release from the India House.

In a letter dated February 19, 1825, of Mary Russell Mitford, who looked
upon Irving as quack absolute, we find her discussing the preacher with
Charles Lamb.]

LETTER 367

CHARLES LAMB TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON

[March 29], 1825.

I have left the d------d India House for Ever!

Give me great joy.

C. LAMB.

[Robinson states in his Reminiscences of Coleridge, Wordsworth and Lamb,
preserved in MS. at Dr. Williams' Library: "A most important incident in
Lamb's life, tho' in the end not so happy for him as he anticipated, was
his obtaining his discharge, with a pension of almost L400 a year, from
the India House. This he announced to me by a note put into my letter
box: 'I have left the India House. D------ Time. I'm all for eternity.'
He was rather more than 50 years of age. I found him