nfident no painter on either side
the Channel could have painted anything near like the face I saw. Again,
would such a painter and forger have taken L40 for a thing, if
authentic, worth L4000? Talma is not in the secret, for he had not even
found out the rhymes in the first inscription. He is coming over with
it, and my life to Southey's "Thalaba," it will gain universal faith.

The letter is wanted, and I am wanted. Imagine the blank filled up with
all kind things.

Our joint, hearty remembrances to both of you. Yours as ever,

C. LAMB.

[1] The Lambs had visited Paris on the invitation of James Kenney, the
dramatist, who had married a Frenchwoman, and was living at Versailles.

LXXI.

TO WALTER WILSON.

_December_ 16, 1822.

Dear Wilson,--_Lightning_ I was going to call you. You must have thought
me negligent in not answering your letter sooner. But I have a habit of
never writing letters but at the office; 'tis so much time cribbed out
of the Company; and I am but just got out of the thick of a tea-sale, in
which most of the entry of notes, deposits, etc., usually falls to
my share.

I have nothing of De Foe's but two or three novels and the "Plague
History." [1] I can give you no information about him. As a slight
general character of what I remember of them (for I have not looked into
them latterly), I would say that in the appearance of _truth,_ in all
the incidents and conversations that occur in them, they exceed any
works of fiction I am acquainted with. It is perfect illusion. The
_author_ never appears in these self-narratives (for so they ought to be
called, or rather auto-biographies), but the _narrator_ chains us down
to an implicit belief in everything he says. There is all the minute
detail of a log-book in it. Dates are painfully pressed upon the memory.
Facts are repeated over and over in varying phrases, till you cannot
choose but believe them. It is like reading evidence given in a court of
justice. So anxious the story-teller seems that the truth should be
clearly comprehended that when he has told us a matter of fact or a
motive, in a line or two farther down he _repeats_ it with his favorite
figure of speech, "I say" so and so, though he had made it abundantly
plain before. This is in imitation of the common people's way of
speaking, or rather of the way in which they are addressed by a master
or mistress who wishes to impress something upon their memories, and has
a wonderful e