brain of the unlucky wight who must
draw upon it for daily sustenance! Henceforth I retract all my foul
complaints of mercantile employment; look upon them as lovers' quarrels.
I was but half in earnest. Welcome, dead timber of a desk, that makes me
live! A little grumbling is a wholesome medicine for the spleen, but in
my inner heart do I approve and embrace this our close, but unharassing,
way of life. I am quite serious. If you can send me Fox, I will not keep
it _six weeks_, and will return it, with warm thanks to yourself and
friend, without blot or dog's-ear. You will much oblige me by
this kindness.

Yours truly,

C. LAMB.

[1] The Quaker poet. Mr. Barton was a clerk in the bank of the Messrs.
Alexander, of Woodbridge, in Suffolk. Encouraged by his literary
success, he thought of throwing up his clerkship and trusting to his pen
for a livelihood,--a design from which he was happily diverted by his
friends.

LXXVI.

TO MISS HUTCHINSON.

_April_ 25, 1823.

Dear Miss H.,--Mary has such an invincible reluctance to any epistolary
exertion that I am sparing her a mortification by taking the pen from
her. The plain truth is, she writes such a mean, detestable hand that
she is ashamed of the formation of her letters. There is an essential
poverty and abjectness in the frame of them. They look like begging
letters. And then she is sure to omit a most substantial word in the
second draught (for she never ventures an epistle without a foul copy
first), which is obliged to be interlined,--which spoils the neatest
epistle, you know. Her figures, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., where she has occasion
to express numerals, as in the date (25th April, 1823), are not figures,
but figurantes; and the combined posse go staggering up and down
shameless, as drunkards in the daytime. It is no better when she rules
her paper. Her lines "are not less erring" than her words; a sort of
unnatural parallel lines, that are perpetually threatening to
meet,--which, you know, is quite contrary to Euclid. Her very blots are
not bold, like this [_here a large blot is inserted_], but poor smears,
half left in and half scratched out, with another smear left in their
place. I like a clear letter; a bold, free hand and a fearless flourish.
Then she has always to go through them (a second operation) to dot her
_i_'s and cross her _t_'s. I don't think she could make a corkscrew if
she tried,--which has such a fine effect at the end or middle of an
ep