G.D. in
return for as many of his own performances; and I confess I never had
any scruple in taking _my own_ again, wherever I found it, shaking the
adherences off; and by this means one copy of 'my works' served for
G.D.,--and, with a little dusting, was made over to my good friend Dr.
Geddes, who little thought whose leavings he was taking when he made me
that graceful bow. By the way, the Doctor is the only one of my
acquaintance who bows gracefully,--my town acquaintance, I mean. How do
you like my way of writing with two inks? I think it is pretty and
motley. Suppose Mrs. W, adopts it, the next time she holds the pen for
you. My dinner waits. I have no time to indulge any longer in these
laborious curiosities. God bless you, and cause to thrive and burgeon
whatsoever you write, and fear no inks of miserable poetasters.

Yours truly,

CHARLES LAMB.

Mary's love.

[1] Lamb alludes to a parody, ridiculing Wordsworth, by J. Hamilton
Reynolds, The verses were entitled "Peter Bell: A Lyrical Ballad;" and
their drift and spirit may be inferred from the following lines from the
preface: "It is now a period of one-and-twenty years since I first wrote
some of the most perfect compositions (except certain pieces I have
written in my later days) that ever dropped from poetical pen. My heart
hath been right and powerful all its years. I never thought an evil or a
weak thought in my life. It has been my aim and my achievement to deduce
moral thunder from buttercups, daisies, celandines, and (as a poet
scarcely inferior to myself hath it) 'such small deer,'" etc.

[2] The original letter is actually written in to
inks,--alternate black and red.

LXV.

TO MANNING,

_May_ 28, 1819,

My Dear M..--I want to know how your brother is, if you have heard
lately. I want to know about you, I wish you were nearer. How are my
cousins, the Gladmans of Wheathampstead, and Farmer Bruton? Mrs. Bruton
is a glorious woman,

"Hail, Mackery End!" [1]

This is a fragment of a blank-verse poem which. I once meditated, but
got no farther. The E. I. H. has been thrown into a quandary by the
strange phenomenon of poor Tommy Bye, whom I have known, man and madman,
twenty-seven years, he being elder here than myself by nine years and
more. He was always a pleasant, gossiping, half-headed, muzzy, dozing,
dreaming, walk-about, inoffensive chap, a little too fond of the
creature,--who isn't at times? But Tommy had _not_ brains to work of