that, but does not set out ruffian-swaggerer. The
character of the Ass with those three lines, worthy to be set in gilt
vellum, and worn in frontlets by the noble beasts for ever--

"Thou would, perhaps, he should become thy foe,
And to that end dost beat him many times:
He cares not for himself, much less thy blow."

Cervantes, Sterne, and Coleridge, have said positively nothing for asses
compared with this.

I write in haste; but p. 24, vol. i., the line you cannot appropriate is
Gray's sonnet, specimenifyed by Wordsworth in first preface to L.B., as
mixed of bad and good style: p. 143, 2nd vol., you will find last poem
but one of the collection on Sidney's death in Spenser, the line,

"Scipio, Caesar, Petrarch of our time."

This fixes it to be Raleigh's: I had guess'd it to be Daniel's. The last
after it, "Silence augmenteth rage," I will be crucified if it be not
Lord Brooke's. Hang you, and all meddling researchers, hereafter, that
by raking into learned dust may find me out wrong in my conjecture!

Dear J.P.C., I shall take the first opportunity of personally thanking
you for my entertainment. We are at Dalston for the most part, but I
fully hope for an evening soon with you in Russell or Bouverie Street,
to talk over old times and books. Remember _us_ kindly to Mrs. J.P.C.
Yours very kindly, CHARLES LAMB. I write in misery.

N.B.--The best pen I could borrow at our butcher's: the ink, I verily
believe, came out of the kennel.

[Collier's _Poetical Decameron_, in two volumes, was published in 1820:
a series of imaginary conversations on curious and little-known books.
His "Twelfth Night" discoveries will be found in the Eighth
Conversation; Collier deduces the play from Barnaby Rich's _Farewell to
Military Profession_, 1606. He also describes Thomas Lodge's
"Rosalynde," the forerunner of "As You Like It," in which is the
character Rosader, whom Lamb calls Osrades. His speech for food runs
thus:--

It hapned that day that _Gerismond_, the lawfull king of _France_
banished by _Torismond_, who with a lustie crew of outlawes liued in
that Forrest, that day in honour of his birth, made a feast to all
his bolde yeomen, and frolickt it with store of wine and venison,
sitting all at a long table vnder the shadow of Limon trees: to that
place by chance fortune conducted Rosader, who seeing such a crew of
braue men, hauing store of that for want of whi