not; sings glorious old
sea-songs on festival nights; and but upon a slight acquaintance of two
years, Coleridge, is as dear a deaf old man to us as old Norris, rest
his soul! was after fifty. To him and his scanty literature (what there
is of it, _sound_) have we flown from the metropolis and its cursed
annualists, reviewers, authors, and the whole muddy ink press of that
stagnant pool.

[1] Lamb's landlord. He had driven Mary Lamb over to see Coleridge at
Highgate. The Lambs had been compelled, by the frequent illnesses of
Mary Lamb, to give up their housekeeping at Enfield and to take lodgings
with the Westwoods.

CII.

TO WORDSWORTH.

_January_ 22, 1830.

And is it a year since we parted from you at the steps of Edmonton
stage? There are not now the years that there used to be. The tale of
the dwindled age of men, reported of successional mankind, is true of
the same man only. We do not live a year in a year now. 'T is a _punctum
stans_. The seasons pass us with indifference. Spring cheers not, nor
winter heightens our gloom: autumn hath foregone its moralities,--they
are "heypass repass," as in a show-box. Yet, as far as last year, occurs
back--for they scarce show a reflex now, they make no memory as
heretofore--'t was sufficiently gloomy. Let the sullen nothing pass.
Suffice it that after sad spirits, prolonged through many of its months,
as it called them, we have cast our skins, have taken a farewell of the
pompous, troublesome trifle called housekeeping, and are settled down
into poor boarders and lodgers at next door with an old couple, the
Baucis and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have nothing to do with our
victuals but to eat them, with the garden but to see it grow, with the
tax-gatherer but to hear him knock, with the maid but to hear her
scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are things unknown to us, save as
spectators of the pageant. We are fed we know not how,--quietists,
confiding ravens. We have the _otium pro dignitate_, a respectable
insignificance. Yet in the self condemned obliviousness, in the
stagnation, some molesting yearnings of life not quite killed rise,
prompting me that there was a London, and that I was of that old
Jerusalem. In dreams I am in Fleet Market; but I wake and cry to sleep
again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa in this detestable Paraclete. What
have I gained by health? Intolerable dulness. What by early hours and
moderate meals? A total blank. Oh, never let t