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, ’tis a little sixpenny thing, too like by half, in which the draughtsman has done his best to avoid flattery. There have been 2 editions of it, which I think are all gone, as they have vanish’d from the window where they hung, a print shop, corner of Great and Little Queen Streets, Lincolns Inn fields, where any London friend of yours may inquire for it; for I am (tho’ you won’t understand it) at Enfield (Mrs. Leishman’s, Chase). We have been here near 3 months, and shall stay 2 or 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 2 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. Ch. 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-paternall 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 childs mind like a large old Mansion [one or two words wafered over]; better if un-or-partially-occupied; peopled with the spirits of deceased members of [for] the County and Justices of the Quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled solitude of one, with my feelings at 7 years old.
Those marble busts of the Emperors, they seem’d as if
they were to stand for ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in
that old Marble Hall, and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity was, while
I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and
corn covers the spot of the noble old Dwelling and its princely gardens. I feel
like a grass-
| 746 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | August |
