f the singers.]

LETTER 604

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN FORSTER

[P.M. June 25, 1834.]

D'r F.--I simply sent for the Miltons because Alsop has some Books of
mine, and I thought they might travel with them. But keep 'em as much
longer as you like. I never trouble my head with other people's
quarrels, I do not always understand my own. I seldom see them in Dover
Street. I know as little as the Man in the Moon about your joint
transactions, and care as little. If you have lost a little portion of
my "good will," it is that you do not come and see me. Arrange with
Procter, when you have done with your moving accidents.

Yours, ambulaturus,

C.L.

LETTER 605

CHARLES LAMB TO J. FULLER RUSSELL

[Summer, 1834.]

M'r Lamb's compt's and shall be happy to look over the lines as soon as
ever Mr. Russell shall send them. He is at Mr. Walden's, Church, _not
Bury_--St, Edm'd.

_Line_ 10. "Ween," and "wist," and "wot," and "eke" are antiquated
frippery, and unmodernize a poem rather than give it an antique air, as
some strong old words may do. "I guess," "I know," "I knew," are quite
as significant.

31. Why "ee"--barbarous Scoticism!--when "eye" is much better and chimes
to "cavalry"? A sprinkling of dis-used words where all the style else is
after the approved recent fashion teases and puzzles.

37. [Anon the storm begins to slake, The sullen clouds to melt
away, The moon becalmed in a blue lake Looks down with melancholy ray.]

The moon becalmed in a blue lake would be more apt to _look up_. I see
my error--the sky is the lake--and beg you to laugh at it.

59. What is a maiden's "een," south of the Tweed? You may as well call
her prettily turned ears her "lugs."

"On the maiden's lugs they fall" (verse 79).

144. "A coy young Miss" will never do. For though you are presumed to be
a modern, writing only of days of old, yet you should not write a word
purely unintelligible to your heroine. Some understanding should be kept
up between you. "Miss" is a nickname not two centuries old; came in at
about the Restoration. The "King's Misses" is the oldest use of it I can
remember. It is Mistress Anne Page, not Miss Page. Modern names and
usages should be kept out of sight in an old subject. W. Scott was sadly
faulty in this respect.

208. [Tear of sympathy.] Pity's sacred dew. Sympathy is a young lady's
word, rife in modern novels, and is almost always wrongly applied. To
sympathize is to feel