should take in
eating her cake; the cursed ingratitude by which, under the color of a
Christian virtue, I had frustrated her cherished purpose. I sobbed,
wept, and took it to heart so grievously that I think I never suffered
the like; and I was right. It was a piece of unfeeling hypocrisy, and
proved a lesson to me ever after. The cake has long been masticated,
consigned to dunghill with the ashes of that unseasonable pauper.

But when Providence, who is better to us all than our aunts, gives me a
pig, remembering my temptation and my fall, I shall endeavor to act
towards it more in the spirit of the donor's purpose.

Yours (short of pig) to command in everything,

C. L.

[1] Some one had sent Coleridge a pig, and the gift was erroneously
credited to Lamb.

[2] Elia: "Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years Ago."

LXVIII.

TO WORDSWORTH.

_March_ 20, 1822.

My Dear Wordsworth,--A letter from you is very grateful; I have not seen
a Kendal postmark so long. We are pretty well, save colds and
rheumatics, and a certain deadness to everything, which I think I may
date from poor John's loss, and another accident or two at the same
time, that has made me almost bury myself at Dalston, where yet I see
more faces than I could wish. Deaths overset one and put one out long
after the recent grief. Two or three have died, within this last two
twelvemonths, and so many parts of me have been numbed. One sees a
picture, reads an anecdote, starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of
it to this person in preference to every other; the person is gone whom
it would have peculiarly suited. It won't do for another. Every
departure destroys a class of sympathies. There's Captain Burney gone!
What fun has whist now? What matters it what you lead, if you can no
longer fancy him looking over you? [1] One never hears anything, but the
image of the particular person occurs with whom alone almost you would
care to share the intelligence,--thus one distributes oneself about; and
now for so many parts of me I have lost the market. Common natures do
not suffice me. Good people, as they are called, won't serve; I want
individuals. I am made up of queer points, and I want so many answering
needles. The going-away of friends does not make the remainder more
precious. It takes so much from them, as there was a common link. A, B,
and C make a party. A dies. B not only loses A, but all A's part in C. C
loses A's part in B, and so the alph