hem expedient. I shall only
mention, that Mr. Willoughby, his resentments having had time to
subside, is at present one of the fastest friends of his old renegado
factor; and that Mr. Listen's hopes of Miss Parker vanishing along with
his unsuccessful suit to Melpomene, in the autumn of 1811 he married his
present lady, by whom he has been blest with one son, Philip, and two
daughters, Ann and Angustina."

* * * * *

"Ask anybody you meet," writes Lamb to Miss Wordsworth, then visiting
some friends in Cambridge, "who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and
I'll hold a wager they'll say Mrs. ----. 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 from a hot Thursday
some twenty years back. She sits in a room with opposite doors and
windows, to let in a thorough draft, which gives her slenderer friends
toothaches. She is to be seen in the market every morning at ten,
cheapening fowls, which I observe the Cambridge poulterers are not
sufficiently careful to stump."

On the person thus briefly sketched Elia wrote an article for the
"London Magazine." As it is not to be found in the standard editions of
its author's works, we herewith present it to our readers. They will
find it to be a clever specimen of Lamb's peculiar and delightful humor.
In truth, it is one of the very best things he ever conjured up. We
observe he has changed the locality of the stout woman, and places her
in Oxford, instead of Cambridge.

* * * * *

"THE GENTLE GIANTESS.

"The widow Blacket, of Oxford, is the largest female I ever had the
pleasure of beholding. There may be her parallel upon the earth, but
surely I never saw it. I take her to be lineally descended from the
maid's aunt of Brainford, who caused Master Ford such uneasiness. She
hath Atlantean shoulders; and as she stoopeth in her gait,--with as few
offences to answer for in her own particular as any of Eve's
daughters,--her back seems broad enough to bear the blame of all the
peccadilloes that have been committed since Adam. She girdeth her
waist--or what she is pleased to esteem as such--nearly up to her
shoulders, from beneath which that huge dorsal expanse, in mountainous
declivity, emergeth. Respect for her alone preventeth the idle boys, who