I AM not in humour to return a fit reply to your
pleasant letter. We are fairly housed at Enfield, and an angel shall not
persuade me to wicked London again. We have now six sabbath days in a week
for—none! The change has worked on my sister’s mind, to make her ill; and
I must wait a tedious time before we can hope to enjoy this place in unison.
Enjoy it, when she recovers, I know we shall. I see no shadow, but in her
illness, for repenting the step! For Mathews—I know my own utter unfitness for such a task. I am no
hand at describing costumes, a great requisite in an account of mannered
pictures. I have not the slightest acquaintance with pictorial language even.
An imitator of me, or rather pretender to be me, in his Rejected Articles, has made me minutely describe the dresses of the
poissardes at Calais!—I could as soon resolve Euclid. I have no eye for forms and fashions. I substitute
analysis, and get rid of the phenomenon by slurring in for it its impression. I
am sure you must have observed this defect, or peculiarity, in my writings;
else the delight would
| 758 | LETTERS OF C. AND M. LAMB | Oct. |
My sister’s verses are homely, but just what they should be; I send them, not for the poetry, but the good sense and good-will of them. I was beginning to transcribe; but Emma is sadly jealous of its getting into more hands, and I won’t spoil it in her eyes by divulging it. Come to Enfield, and read it. As my poor cousin, the bookbinder, now with God, told me, most sentimentally, that having purchased a picture of fish at a dead man’s sale, his heart ached to see how the widow grieved to part with it, being her dear husband’s favourite; and he almost apologised for his generosity by saying he could not help telling the widow she was “welcome to come and look at it”—e.g. at his house—“as often as she pleased.” There was the germ of generosity in an uneducated mind. He had just reading enough from the backs of books for the “nec sinit esse feros”—had he read inside, the same impulse would have led him to give back the two-guinea thing—with a request to see it, now and then, at her house. We are parroted into delicacy.—Thus you have a tale for a Sonnet.
Adieu! with (imagine both) our loves.
