ter,
but I have had a hankering to hear about you some days. Perhaps it will
go off before your reply comes. If it don't, I assure you no letter was
ever welcomer from, you, from Paris or Macao.

C. LAMB.

[1] See the Elia essay, "Mackery End, in H---shire."

LXVI.

TO MISS WORDSWORTH.

_November_ 25, 1819.

Dear Miss Wordsworth,--You will think me negligent, but I wanted to see
more of Willy [1] before I ventured to express a prediction, Till
yesterday I had barely seen him,--_Virgilium tantum vidi_; but yesterday
he gave us his small company to a bullock's heart, and I can pronounce
him a lad of promise. He is no pedant nor bookworm; so far I can answer.
Perhaps he has hitherto paid too little attention to other men's
inventions, preferring, like Lord Foppington, the "natural sprouts of
his own." But he has observation, and seems thoroughly awake. I am ill
at remembering other people's _bon mots_, but the following are a few.
Being taken over Waterloo Bridge, he remarked that if we had no
mountains, we had a fine river, at least,--which was a touch of the
comparative; but then he added in a strain which augured less for his
future abilities as a political economist, that he supposed they must
take at least a pound a week toll. Like a curious naturalist, he
inquired if the tide did not come up a little salty. This being
satisfactorily answered, he put another question, as to the flux and
reflux; which being rather cunningly evaded than artfully solved by that
she-Aristotle Mary, who muttered something about its getting up an hour
sooner and sooner every day, he sagely replied, "Then it must come to
the same thing at last,"--which was a speech worthy of an infant Halley!
The lion in the 'Change by no means came up to his ideal standard,--so
impossible is it for Nature, in any of her works, to come up to the
standard of a child's imagination! The whelps (lionets) he was sorry to
find were dead; and on particular inquiry, his old friend the
orang-outang had gone the way of all flesh also. The grand tiger was
also sick, and expected in no short time to exchange this transitory
world for another or none. But, again, there was a golden eagle (I do
not mean that of Charing) which did much arride and console him.
William's genius, I take it, leans a little to the figurative; for being
at play at tricktrack (a kind of minor billiard-table which we keep for
smaller wights, and sometimes refresh our own mature fatig