agreeable as they used to be, when "winter bleak had charms for me." I
cannot conjure up a kind similitude for those snowy flakes--Let them
keep to Twelfth Cakes.

Mrs. Paris, our Cambridge friend, has been in Town. You do not know the
Watfords? in Trumpington Street--they are capital people.

Ask any body you meet, who is the biggest woman in Cambridge--and I'll
hold you a wager they'll say Mrs. Smith.

She broke down two benches in Trinity Gardens, one on the confines of
St. John's, which occasioned a litigation between the societies as to
repairing it. In warm weather she retires into an ice-cellar
(literally!) and dates the returns of the years from a hot Thursday some
20 years back. She sits in a room with opposite doors and windows, to
let in a thorough draught, which gives her slenderer friends
tooth-aches. She is to be seen in the market every morning at 10,
cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge Poulterers are not
sufficiently careful to stump.

Having now answered most of the points containd in your Letter, let me
end with assuring you of our very best kindness, and excuse Mary from
not handling the Pen on this occasion, especially as it has fallen into
so much better hands! Will Dr. W. accept of my respects at the end of a
foolish Letter.

C.L.

[Miss Wordsworth was visiting her brother, Christopher Wordsworth, the
Master of Trinity.

Willy was William Wordsworth, junr.

Lamb's New Year speculations were contained in his _Elia_ essay "New
Year's Eve," in the _London Magazine_ for January, 1821. There is no
evidence that Campbell disapproved of the essay. Canon Ainger suggests
that Lamb may have thus alluded playfully to the pessimism of his
remarks, so opposed to the pleasures of hope. When the _Quarterly_ did
"come in," in 1823, it was with cold words, as we shall see.

"Trinity Library." It is here that are preserved those MSS. of Milton,
which Lamb in his essay "Oxford in the Vacation," in the _London
Magazine_ for October, 1820, says he regrets to have seen.

"Cromwell at Sidney." See Mary Lamb's letter to Miss Hutchinson, August
20, 1815.

"Harvey ... at Dr. Davy's"--Dr. Martin Davy, Master of Caius.

"Alsop." This is the first mention of Thomas Allsop (1795-1880),
Coleridge's friend and disciple, who, meeting Coleridge in 1818, had
just come into Lamb's circle. We shall meet him frequently. Allsop's
_Letters, Conversations and Recollections of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_
contai