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　　LETTER 243

　　CHARLES LAMB TO CHARLES AND JAMES OLLIER

　　[P.M. June 18, 1818.]

　　Dear Sir (whichever opens it)

　　I am going off to Birmingh'm. I find my books, whatever faculty of selling they may have (I wish they had more for {your/my} sake), are admirably adapted for giving away. You have been bounteous. SIX more and I shall have satisfied all just claims. Am I taking too great a liberty in begging you to send 4 as follows, and reserve 2 for me when I come home? That will make 31. Thirty-one times 12 is 372 shillings, Eighteen pounds twelve Shillings!!!—but here are my friends, to whom, if you could transmit them, as I shall be away a month, you will greatly oblige the obliged

　　C. LAMB.

　　Mr. Ayrton, James Street, Buckingham Gate Mr. Alsager, Suffolk Street East, Southwark, by Horsemonger Lane and in one parcel directed to R. Southey, Esq., Keswick, Cumberland one for R. S.; and one for W'm. Wordsworth, Esq'r.

　　If you will be kind enough simply to write "from the Author" in all 4—you will still further etc.—

　　Either Longman or Murray is in the frequent habit of sending books to Southey and will take charge of the Parcel. It will be as well to write in at the beginning thus

　　R. Southey Esq. from the Author.

　　W. Wordsworth Esq. from the Author.

　　Then, if I can find the remaining 2, left for me at Russell St when I return, rather than encroach any more on the heap, I will engage to make no more new friends ad infinitum, YOURSELVES being the last.

　　Yours truly C. L.

　　I think Southey will give us a lift in that damn'd Quarterly. I meditate an attack upon that Cobler Gifford, which shall appear immediately after any favourable mention which S. may make in the Quarterly. It can't in decent gratitude appear before.

　　[We know nothing of Lamb's visit to Birmingham. He is hardly likely to have stayed with any of the Lloyd family. The attack on Gifford was probably the following sonnet, printed in The Examiner for October 3 and 4, 1819:—

　　ST. CRISPIN TO MR. GIFFORD

　　All unadvised, and in an evil hour,

　　Lured by aspiring thoughts, my son, you daft

　　The lowly labours of the Gentle Craft

　　For learned toils, which blood and spirits sour.

　　All things, dear pledge, are not in all men's power;

　　The wiser sort of shrub affects the ground;

　　And sweet content of mind is oftener found

　　In cobbler's parlour, than in critic's bower.

　　The sorest work is what doth cross the grain;

　　And better to this hour you had been plying

　　The obsequious awl with well-waxed finger flying,

　　Than ceaseless thus to till a thankless vein;

　　Still teazing Muses, which are still denying;

　　Making a stretching-leather of your brain.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5