hat dangles
from a skull that never reached in thought and thorough imagination two
inches, or farther than from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry
to the sounding-board of the pulpit.

But the epitaphs were trim and sprag, and patent, and pleased the
survivors of Thames Ditton above the old mumpsimus of "Afflictions
sore." ... To do justice, though, it must be owned that even the
excellent feeling which dictated this dirge when new, must have suffered
something in passing through so many thousand applications, many of them
no doubt quite misplaced, as I have seen in Islington churchyard (I
think) an Epitaph to an Infant who died "_AEtatis_ four months," with
this seasonable inscription appended, "Honor thy father and thy mother,
that thy days may be long in the land," etc. Sincerely wishing your
children long life to honor, etc., I remain,

C. LAMB.

[1] Published in Coleridge's "Friend," Feb. 22, 1810.

LIII.

TO WORDSWORTH.

_August_ 14, 1814.

Dear Wordsworth,--I cannot tell you how pleased I was at the receipt of
the great armful of poetry which you have sent me: and to get it before
the rest of the world, too! I have gone quite through with it, and was
thinking to have accomplished that pleasure a second time before I wrote
to thank you; but Martin Burney came in the night (while we were out)
and made holy theft of it: but we expect restitution in a day or two. It
is the noblest conversational poem [1] I ever read,--a day in heaven. The
part (or rather main body) which has left the sweetest odor on my memory
(a bad term for the remains of an impression so recent) is the "Tales of
the Churchyard"--the only girl among seven brethren, born out of due
time, and not duly taken away again; the deaf man and the blind man; the
Jacobite and the Hanoverian, whom antipathies reconcile; the
Scarron-entry of the rusticating parson upon his solitude,--these were
all new to me too. My having known the story of Margaret (at the
beginning), a very old acquaintance, even as long back as when I saw you
first at Stowey, did not make her reappearance less fresh. I don't know
what to pick out of this best of books upon the best subjects for
partial naming. That gorgeous sunset is famous; I think it must have
been the identical one we saw on Salisbury Plain five years ago, that
drew Phillips from the card-table, where he had sat from rise of that
luminary to its unequalled setting. But neither he nor I had gifted e