B.'s pleasant daughter to be
humble partakers. So much for my hint at visitors, which was scarcely
calculated for droppers-in from Woodbridge; the sky does not drop such
larks every day. My very kindest wishes to you all three, with my
sister's best love.

C. LAMB.

XCII.

TO J. B. DIBDIN.

_June_, 1826.

Dear D.,--My first impulse upon seeing your letter was pleasure at
seeing your old neat hand, nine parts gentlemanly, with a modest dash of
the clerical; my second, a thought natural enough this hot weather: Am I
to answer all this? Why, 't is as long as those to the Ephesians and
Galatians put together: I have counted the words, for curiosity.... I
never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man. Your fair
critic in the coach reminds me of a Scotchman, who assured me he did not
see much in Shakspeare. I replied, I daresay _not_. He felt the
equivoke, looked awkward and reddish, but soon returned to the attack by
saying that he thought Burns was as good as Shakspeare. I said that I
had no doubt he was,--to a _Scotchman_. We exchanged no more words that
day.... Let me hear that you have clambered up to Lover's Seat; it is as
fine in that neighborhood as Juan Fernandez,--as lonely, too, when the
fishing-boats are not out; I have sat for hours staring upon a shipless
sea. The salt sea is never as grand as when it is left to itself. One
cock-boat spoils it; a seamew or two improves it. And go to the little
church, which is a very Protestant Loretto, and seems dropped by some
angel for the use of a hermit who was at once parishioner and a whole
parish. It is not too big. Go in the night, bring it away in your
portmanteau, and I will plant it in my garden. It must have been
erected, in the very infancy of British Christianity, for the two or
three first converts, yet with all the appurtenances of a church of the
first magnitude,--its pulpit, its pews, its baptismal font; a cathedral
in a nutshell. The minister that divides the Word there must give
lumping pennyworths. It is built to the text of "two or three assembled
in my name." It reminds me of the grain of mustard-seed. If the glebe
land is proportionate, it may yield two potatoes. Tithes out of it could
be no more split than a hair. Its First fruits must be its Last, for 't
would never produce a couple. It is truly the strait and narrow way, and
few there be (of London visitants) that find it. The still small voice
is surely to be found there, i