present, though beset with
temptations. In the first place, the Covent Garden Manager has declined
accepting his Tragedy, [1] though (having read it) I see no reason upon
earth why it might not have run a very fair chance, though it certainly
wants a prominent part for a Miss O'Neil or a Mr. Kean. However, he is
going to write to-day to Lord Byron to get it to Drury. Should you see
Mrs. C., who has just written to C. a letter, which I have given him, it
will be as well to say nothing about its fate till some answer is shaped
from Drury. He has two volumes printing together at Bristol, both
finished as far as the composition goes; the latter containing his
fugitive poems, the former his Literary Life. Nature, who conducts every
creature by instinct to its best end, has skilfully directed C. to take
up his abode at a Chemist's Laboratory in Norfolk Street. She might as
well have sent a _Helluo Librorum_ for cure to the Vatican. God keep him
inviolate among the traps and pitfalls! He has done pretty well
as yet. [2]

Tell Miss Hutchinson my sister is every day wishing to be quietly
sitting down to answer her very kind letter; but while C. stays she can
hardly find a quiet time. God bless him!

Tell Mrs. Wordsworth her postscripts are always agreeable. They are
legible too. Your manual-graphy is terrible,--dark as Lycophron.
"Likelihood," for instance, is thus typified.... I should not wonder if
the constant making out of such paragraphs is the cause of that weakness
in Mrs. W.'s eyes, as she is tenderly pleased to express it. Dorothy, I
hear, has mounted spectacles; so you have deoculated two of your dearest
relations in life. Well, God bless you, and continue to give you power
to write with a finger of power upon our hearts what you fail to
impress, in corresponding lucidness, upon our outward eyesight!

Mary's love to all; she is quite well.

I am called off to do the deposits on Cotton Wool. But why do I relate
this to you, who want faculties to comprehend the great mystery of
deposits, of interest, of warehouse rent, and contingent fund? Adieu!

C. LAMB.

[1] Zapolya.

[2] Lamb alludes, of course, to Coleridge's opium habit.

LXI.

TO WORDSWORTH.

_April_ 26, 1816.

Dear W.,--I have just finished the pleasing task of correcting the
revise of the poems and letter. [1] I hope they will come out faultless.
One blunder I saw and shuddered at. The hallucinating rascal had printed
_battered_ for _battene