but

back on Charles's comfort as his feverish | (if it had suited them) for a husband; teasing ways have been upon mine. Our very few husbands have I ever wished were love for each other has been the torment of mine, which is rather against the state in our lives hitherto. I am most seriously in- general." tending to lend the whole force of my mind to counteract this, and I see some prospect of success.

We have printed what is certainly a most remarkable passage, showing that Miss Lamb was in 1806 turning over in her mind the necessity of a separation between her brother and herself. She saw, however. that it might be "a dangerous experiment; it is superfluous of course to add that it was never tried. What is still more curious, we shall come by-and-by to a letter from Lamb to a friend, which compels us to believe that he contemplated at one time, at least, such a parting as a possible contingency.

In a letter of June 2, 1806, is something which will be fresh about the Tales from Shakespeare, on which Miss Lamb was already engaged:

Out of a letter of July 2, 1806, we select what follows: "The best news I have to tell you is that the farce is accepted. That is to say, the manager has written to say it shall be brought out when an opportunity serves. You must come and see it the first night; for, if it succeeds, it will be a great pleasure to you, and, if it should not, we shall want your consolation. So you must come.

"Charles wants me to write a play, but I am not over-anxious to set about it; but, seriously, will you draw me out a skeleton of a story either from memory of anything you have read, or from your own invention, and I will fill it up in some way or other? I begin to hope the home holidays will go on very well."

...

The last sentence points of course to the abandonment of the three-shillings-a-week apartment, which at first occasioned Miss Lamb considerable misgiving.

There is a letter from Miss Lamb to Miss Stoddart of the 22d October, 1806, which yields the following:

"I thank you a thousand times for the beautiful work you have sent me. I received the parcel from a strange gentleman yesterday. I like the patterns very much. You have quite set me up in finery; but you should have sent the silk handkerchief too. Will you make a parcel of that, and send it by the Salisbury coach? I should like to have it in a few days, because we have not yet been to Mr. Babb's, and that handkerchief would suit this time of year nicely. ..

"I have been busy making waistcoats, and plotting new work to succeed the Tales. As yet I have not hit upon anything to my mind.

"My Tales are to be published [in] separate story books; I mean in single stories, like the children's little shilling books. I cannot send them you in manuscript, because they are all in Godwin's hands; but all will be published very soon, and then you shall have it all in print. Charles has written Macbeth, Othello, King Lear; and has begun Hamlet. You would like to see us as we often sit writing on one table, but not on one cushion sitting, like Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer Nights' Dream,' or rather like an old literary Darby and "Charles took an amended copy of his Joan, I taking snuff, and he groaning all the farce [to] Mr. Wroughton the manager while, and saying he can make nothing of yesterday. Mr. Wroughton was very it; which he always says till he has finished, friendly to him, and expressed high approand then he finds out he has made some-bation of the farce; but there are two, he thing of it. tells him, to come out before it; yet he gave him hopes that it will come out this season. But I am afraid you will not see it by Christmas. We are pretty well, and in fresh spirits about the farce. Charles has been very good lately in the matter of smoking.

"If I tell you that you Widow Blackacre-ise, you must tell me I Tale-ise, for my Tales seem to be all the subject-matter I write about; and, when you see them, you will think them poor little baby-stories to make such a talk about."

Miss Lamb concludes with inquiries about Miss Stoddart's still pending love-affairs, and winds up thus: "I have known many single men I should have liked in my life

...

"When you come, bring the gown you wish to sell. Mrs. Coleridge will be in town then, and, if she happens not to fancy it, perhaps some other person may..

...

"When I saw what a prodigious quantity | Miss Lamb and Martin, it seems, arranged of work you had put into the finery, I was quite ashamed of my unreasonable request; I will never serve you so again; but I do dearly love worked muslin."

Miss Stoddart had for some time been engaged to William Hazlitt the writer, and the marriage was fixed for the spring of 1808. The Lambs were to be there. Nay, - Miss Lamb was to be a bridesmaid! This led to a grand paper-discussion upon what she was to wear on the occasion, and a letter of March 16, 1808, is full of nothing else:

more

"I never heard," says Miss Lamb, alluding to some proposal which her friend had made to her, "in the annals of weddings (since the days of Nausicaa, and she only washed her old gowns for that purpose) that the brides ever furnished the apparel of their maids. Besides, I can be completely clad in your work without it, for the spotted muslin will serve both for cap and hat (nota bene, my hat is the same as yours), and the gown you sprigged for me has never been made up; therefore I can wear that. Or, if you like better, I will make up a new silk which Manning has sent me from China."

...

It appears that Miss Stoddart had given Miss Lamb a gold pin, which Miss Lamb had presented to somebody else. She says: "I repent me of the deed, wishing I had it now to send to Miss H[azlitt] with the border, and I cannot, will not, give her the doctor's pin; for, never having had any presents from gentlemen in my young days, I highly prize all they now give me, thinking my latter days are better than my for

mer.

Do not ask me to be godmother, for I have an objection to that; but there is, I believe, no serious duty attached to a bridesmaid, therefore I come with a willing mind.

What has Charles done that nobody invites him to the wedding?"

Miss Stoddart became Mrs. Hazlitt on the 1st May, 1808, and after this date the letters become less frequent, and, what is more, of less consequence to our present object. We are merely dealing with unpublished details or little known facts in the history of the Lambs. We have already emerged from the very obscure period in the lives of the brother and sister; for, after 1808, we begin to obtain light from other sources. At first, however, that light shines weakly.

In 1809, the Lambs, with Martin Burney and Colonel Phillips, visited Mr. and Mrs. Hazlitt at Winterslow, near Salisbury.

the preliminaries. They went down in October; and here is a wonderfully characteristic bit from a letter of June, setting forth what they had planned between them. After stating that there is a good deal of uncertainty about the time of their starting, Miss Lamb goes on to say:

..

Martin

Nor can we positively say we shall come after all, for we have scruples of conscience about there being so many of us. says, if you can borrow a blanket or two, he can sleep on the floor without either bed or mattress, which would save his expenses at the Hut; for, if Phillips breakfasts there, he must do so too, which would swallow up all his money; and he and I have calculated that, if he has no more expenses, he may as well spare that money to give you for a part of his roast beef. We can spare you also just five pounds: you are not to say this to Hazlitt, lest his delicacy should be alarmed.

"Thank you very much for the good work you have done for me. Mrs. Stoddart also thanks you for the gloves. How often must I tell you never to do any needlework for anybody but me?

"I cannot write any more, for we have got a noble Life of Lord Nelson' lent us for a short time by my poor relation the bookbinder."

Query, was this the person out of whom Lamb got the basis and first notion of his Essay on "Poor Relations"?

In a former letter of the present series, Miss Lamb propounded to her correspondent a scheme which she had in contemplation for living apart from her brother, and so, as she considered, studying both their happinesses. We now get to a letter from Lamb to Hazlitt himself, of November, 1810 (which Talfourd has not given), in which, after referring a little at length to a very bad illness which his sister is at that juncture labouring under, he writes:

"Some decision we must come to; for the harassing fever we have both been in, owing to Miss -'s coming, is not to be borne, and I had rather be dead than so alive."

In the same. letter he says: "Coleridge is in town, or at least at Hammersmith. He is writing, or going to write, in the Courier against Cobber[t] and in favor of PaperMoney."

We have nearly done, but first we must convey ourselves by a long jump to 1824, when the Stoddarts were again at Malta, where Dr. Stoddart had been appointed Chief Justice. On one foolscap sheet of pa per before us is a twofold letter-one writ

D

ten by Miss Lamb to Lady Stoddart, the other by Lamb to Sir John. We must confine ourselves strictly, as usual, to pertinent and neglected particulars.

"What is Henry [Stoddart] about? And what should one wish for him?" demands Miss Lamb in her part of the sheet. "If he be in search of a wife, I will send him out Emma Isola. You remember Emma, that you were so kind as to invite to your ball. She is now with us, and I am moving heaven and earth- that is to say, I am pressing the matter upon all the very few friends I have that are likely to assist me in such a case- to get her into a family as a governess; and Charles and I do little else here than teach her something or other all day long. We are striving to put enough Latin into her to enable her to teach it to young learners.

"I expect a pacquet of manuscript from you-you promised me the office of negotiating with booksellers and so forth for your next work; is it in good forwardness, or do you grow rich and indolent now? I took a large sheet of paper in order to leave Charles room to add something more worth reading than my poor

the Admiralty Court, but my head aches.
hesterno vino. I can scarce pump up words,
much less ideas, congruous to be sent so
far. But your son must have this by to-
night's post.
Manning is gone to

Rome, Naples, &c., probably to touch at
Sicily, Malta, Guernsey, &c.; but I don't
know the map.
I am teaching

Emma Latin. By the time you can an-
swer this, she will be qualified to instruct
young ladies; she is a capital English read-
er, and S. T. C. acknowledges that part of
a passage in Milton she read better than
be, and part he read best, her part being
the shorter. But, seriously, if Lady St
(oblivious pen, that was about to write
Mrs. !) could hear of such a young person
wanted (she smatters of French, some
Italian, music of course), we'd send our
loves by her. My congratulations and as-
surances of old esteem.
C. L."

So much for the Lamb and Stoddart correspondence between 1803 and 1824. It supplies, with what we propose to jot down by way of concluding, a certain number of lacunæ, which will be of service to whoever, with Rembrandtish pen, shall portray hereafter the life of Lamb. As Lamb's letter has not hitherto ap- It has been of late, and since the appeared in print, it may not be uninterest-pearance of Mr. Barry Cornwall's book, ing to give it entire (exceptis excipien- somewhat authoritatively declared that the dis):

mite."

mystery respecting the young girl Alice W with whom Lamb was in love, will "DEAR KNIGHT OLD ACQUAINT- never be unravelled, and is irrecoverably ANCE, 'Tis with a violence to the pure buried. Not quite so, we should say. In a imagination (vide the 'Excursion' passim) memorandum, partly in Lamb's hand, and that I can bring myself to believe I am furnishing for some correspondent a key to writing to Dr. Stoddart once again at the names of persons mentioned in the first Malta. But the deductions of severe rea- series of "ELIA" by their initials, occurs son warrant the proceeding. I write from - Alice W-? That is, the querist Enfield, where we are seriously weighing asks Lamb who she is, leaving a vacant the advantages of dullness over the over-space for the solution. Lamb replies: Alexcitement of too much company, but have ice W. feigned (Winterton); by which we not yet come to a conclusion. What is the apprehend that he meant to convey to the news? for we see no paper here; perhaps inquirer that Winterton was not the real you can send us an old one from Malta. name. Only I heard a butcher in the market-place Now a conjecture arises out of this, that, whisper something about a change of Min-if Winterton was not the real name, it was istry. I don't know who's in or out, or a name something similar to it. Lamb, in care, only as it might affect you. one or two passages of the "Essays," where I have just received Godwin's third volume she is alluded to, brings her in as of the Republic' which only reaches to the W n," leaving us to guess that only two commencement of the Protectorate. I think letters require to be supplied to arrive at he means to spin it out to his life's thread. what we want. Our own conclusion is, Have you seen Fearn's 'Anti-Tooke'? I that the name was Winn-Alice Winn. am no judge of such things; you are; but I think it very clever indeed. If I knew your bookseller, I'd order it for you at a venture; 'tis two octavos, Longman and Co. Or do you read now? Tell it not in

"Alice

Who Miss Winn was is equally doubtful. But she afterwards married Mr. Bartrum, the pawnbroker, of Princes Street; Coventry Street; and Lamb was seen by an intimate friend, subsequently to his Alice be

coming Mrs. Bartrum, to wander up and himself, Dr. Nott, and, we believe, Mr. Puldown outside the shop, in the hope of catch-ham, in a few instances, wrote comments ing a glimpse of the object of his passion.