f anywhere. A sounding-board is merely
there for ceremony. It is secure from earthquakes, not more from
sanctity than size, for't would feel a mountain thrown upon it no more
than a taper-worm would. _Go and see, but not without your spectacles_.

XCIII.

TO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON.

_January_ 20, 1827.

Dear Robinson,--I called upon you this morning, and found that you had
gone to visit a dying friend. I had been upon a like errand. Poor
Norris [1] has been lying dying for now almost a week,--such is the
penalty we pay for having enjoyed a strong constitution! Whether he knew
me or not, I know not, or whether he saw me through his poor glazed
eyes; but the group I saw about him I shall not forget. Upon the bed, or
about it, were assembled his wife and two daughters, and poor deaf
Richard, his son, looking doubly stupefied. There they were, and seemed
to have been sitting all the week. I could only reach out a hand to Mrs.
Norris. Speaking was impossible in that mute chamber. By this time I
hope it is all over with him. In him I have a loss the world cannot make
up. He was my friend and my father's friend all the life I can remember.
I seem to have made foolish friendships ever since. Those are
friendships which outlive a second generation. Old as I am waxing, in
his eyes I was still the child he first knew me. To the last he called
me Charley. I have none to call me Charley now. He was the last link
that bound me to the Temple. You are but of yesterday. In him seem to
have died the old plainness of manners and singleness of heart. Letters
he knew nothing of, nor did his reading extend beyond the pages of the
"Gentleman's Magazine." Yet there was a pride of literature about him
from being amongst books (he was librarian), and from some scraps of
doubtful Latin which he had picked up in his office of entering
students, that gave him very diverting airs of pedantry. Can I forget
the erudite look with which, when he had been in vain trying to make out
a black-letter text of Chaucer in the Temple Library, he laid it down
and told me that "in those old books Charley, there is sometimes a deal
of very indifferent spelling;" and seemed to console himself in the
reflection! His jokes--for he had his jokes--are now ended; but they
were old trusty perennials, staples that pleased after _decies
repetita_, and were always as good as new. One song he had, which was
reserved for the night of Christmas Day, which we always spen