," though 't is a common phrase with us.

If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne), inquire if Old Godfrey is living,
and how he got home from the Crusades. He must be a very old man.

[1] A dog given to Lamb by Thomas Hood. See letter to Patmore dated
September, 1827.

XCV.

TO BERNARD BARTON.

_August_ 10, 1827.

Dear B. B.,--I have not been able to answer you, for we have had and are
having (I just snatch a moment) our poor quiet retreat, to which we fled
from society, full of company,--some staying with us; and this moment as
I write, almost, a heavy importation of two old ladies has come in.
Whither can I take wing from the oppression of human faces? Would I were
in a wilderness of apes, tossing cocoa-nuts about, grinning and
grinned at!

Mitford was hoaxing you surely about my engraving; 't is a little
sixpenny thing, [1] too like by half, in which the draughtsman has done
his best to avoid flattery. There have been two editions of it, which I
think are all gone, as they have vanished from the window where they
hung,--a print-shop, corner of Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincoln's
Inn Fields,--where any London friend of yours may inquire for it; for I
am (though you _won't understand it_) at Enfield Chase. We have been
here near three months, and shall stay two more, if people will let us
alone; but they persecute us from village to village. So don't direct to
_Islington_ again till further notice. I am trying my hand at a drama,
in two acts, founded on Crabbe's "Confidant," _mutatis mutandis_. You
like the Odyssey: did you ever read my "Adventures of Ulysses," founded
on Chapman's old translation of it? For children or men. Chapman is
divine, and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of his divinity.
When you come to town I'll show it you. You have well described your
old-fashioned grand paternal hall. Is it not odd that every one's
earliest recollections are of some such place? I had my Blakesware
[Blakesmoor in the "London"]. Nothing fills a child's mind like a large
old mansion; better if un--or partially--occupied,--peopled with the
spirits of deceased members of the county and justices of the quorum.
Would I were buried in the peopled solitudes of one, with my feelings at
seven years old! Those marble busts of the emperors, they seemed as if
they were to stand forever, as they had stood from the living days of
Rome, in that old marble hall, and I too partake of their permanency.
Eternity was,