e they submitted to the
discipline of a weather-cock, before the Quarters were made. In the
street, with the blended noises of life about me, I hear, and my head is
lightened, but in a room the hubbub comes back, and I am deaf as a
Sinner. Did I tell you of a pleasant sketch Hood has done, which he
calls _Very Deaf Indeed_? It is of a good naturd stupid looking old
gentleman, whom a footpad has stopt, but for his extreme deafness cannot
make him understand what he wants; the unconscious old gentleman is
extending his ear-trumpet very complacently, and the fellow is firing a
pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball will pierce his skull
sooner than the report reach his sensorium. I chuse a very little bit of
paper, for my ear hisses when I bend down to write. I can hardly read a
book, for I miss that small soft voice which the idea of articulated
words raises (almost imperceptibly to you) in a silent reader. I seem
too deaf to see what I read. But with a touch or two of returning Zephyr
my head will melt. What Lyes you Poets tell about the May! It is the
most ungenial part of the Year, cold crocuses, cold primroses, you take
your blossoms in Ice --a painted Sun--

Unmeaning joy around appears,
And Nature smiles as if she sneers.

It is ill with me when I begin to look which way the wind sits. Ten
years ago I literally did not know the point from the broad end of the
Vane, which it was the [?that] indicated the Quarter. I hope these ill
winds have blowd _over_ you, as they do thro' me. Kindest rememb'ces to
you and yours. C.L.

["Your neat little poem." It is not possible to trace this poem.
Probably, I think, the "Stanzas written for a blank leaf in Sewell's
History of the Quakers," printed in _A Widow's Tale_, 1827.

"George 3." Byron's "Vision of Judgment" thus closes:--

King George slipp'd into Heaven for one;
And when the tumult dwindled to a calm,
I left him practising the hundredth psalm.

This is Hood's sketch, in his _Whims and Oddities_:--

[Illustration: "Very deaf indeed."]

"Unmeaning joy around appears..." I have not found this.]

LETTER 395

CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

June 1st, 1826.

Dear Coleridge,--If I know myself, nobody more detests the display of
personal vanity which is implied in the act of sitting for one's picture
than myself. But the fact is, that the likeness which accompanies this
letter was