d, if the judge
pleases) of every infant born with a neck on. Oh B.C., my whole heart is
faint, and my whole head is sick (how is it?) at this damned, canting,
unmasculine unbawdy (I had almost said) age! Don't show this to your
child's mother or I shall be Orpheusized, scattered into Hebras. Damn
the King, lords, commons, and _specially_ (as I said on Muswell Hill on
a Sunday when I could get no beer a quarter before one) all Bishops,
Priests and Curates. Vale.

["Ainsworth." Referring to Robert Ainsworth's _Thesaurus_, 1736.
_Abactor_ (see Forcellini), a stealer or driver away of cattle.
Ainsworth gives only _abactus_--to drive away by force.

"The Gypsy's Malison." This is the sonnet in _Blackwood_ for January,
1829.]

LETTER 475

(_Fragment_)

CHARLES LAMB TO B.W. PROCTER

[No date. Early 1829.]

The comings in of an incipient conveyancer are not adequate to the
receipt of three twopenny post non-paids in a week. Therefore, after
this, I condemn my stub to long and deep silence, or shall awaken it to
write to lords. Lest those raptures in this honeymoon of my
correspondence, which you avow for the gentle person of my Nuncio, after
passing through certain natural grades, as Love, Love and Water, Love
with the chill off, then subsiding to that point which the heroic suitor
of his wedded dame, the noble-spirited Lord Randolph in the play,
declares to be the ambition of his passion, a reciprocation of
"complacent kindness,"--should suddenly plump down (scarce staying to
bait at the mid point of indifference, so hungry it is for distaste) to
a loathing and blank aversion, to the rendering probable such counter
expressions as this,--"Damn that infernal twopenny postman" (words which
make the not yet glutted inamorato "lift up his hands and wonder who can
use them.") While, then, you are not ruined, let me assure thee, O thou
above the painter, and next only under Giraldus Cambrensis, the most
immortal and worthy to be immortal Barry, thy most ingenious and golden
cadences do take my fancy mightily. They are at this identical moment
under the snip and the paste of the fairest hands (bating chilblains) in
Cambridge, soon to be transplanted to Suffolk, to the envy of half of
the young ladies in Bury. But tell me, and tell me truly, gentle Swain,
is that Isola Bella a true spot in geographical denomination, or a
floating Delos in thy brain? Lurks that fair island in verity in the
bosom of Lake Maggiore, or som