s neither
accepted nor rejected. Eight weeks am I kept in this fearful suspense.
Guess what an absorbing stake I feel it. I am not conscious of the
existence of friends present or absent. The East India Directors alone
can be that thing to me or not. I have just learned that nothing will be
decided this week. Why the next? Why any week? It has fretted me into an
itch of the fingers; I rub 'em against paper, and write to you, rather
than not allay this scorbuta.

While I can write, let me adjure you to have no doubts of Irving. Let
Mr. Mitford drop his disrespect. Irving has prefixed a dedication (of a
missionary subject, first part) to Coleridge, the most beautiful,
cordial, and sincere. He there acknowledges his obligation to S. T. C.
for his knowledge of Gospel truths, the nature of a Christian Church,
etc.,--to the talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (at whose Gamaliel feet he
sits weekly), rather than to that of all the men living. This from him,
the great dandled and petted sectarian, to a religious character so
equivocal in the world's eye as that of S. T. C., so foreign to the
Kirk's estimate,--can this man be a quack? The language is as affecting
as the spirit of the dedication. Some friend told him, "This dedication
will do you no good,"--_i. e._, not in the world's repute, or with your
own people. "That is a reason for doing it," quoth Irving.

I am thoroughly pleased with him. He is firm, out-speaking, intrepid,
and docile as a pupil of Pythagoras. You must like him.

Yours, in tremors of painful hope,

C. LAMB.

LXXXVI.

TO WORDSWORTH

_April_ 6, 1825

Dear Wordsworth,--I have been several times meditating a letter to you
concerning the good thing which has befallen me; but the thought of poor
Monkhouse [1] came across me. He was one that I had exulted in the
prospect of congratulating me. He and you were to have been the first
participators; for indeed it has been ten weeks since the first motion
of it. Here am I then, after thirty-three years' slavery, sitting in my
own room at eleven o'clock this finest of all April mornings, a freed
man, with L441 a year for the remainder of my life, live I as long as
John Dennis, who outlived his annuity and starved at ninety: L441;
_i.e., L450_, with a deduction of L9 for a provision secured to my
sister, she being survivor, the pension guaranteed by Act Georgii
Tertii, etc.

I came home FOREVER on Tuesday in last week. The incomprehensibleness of
my con