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　　LETTER 239

　　CHARLES LAMB TO DOROTHY WORDSWORTH (Same letter.)

　　Dear Miss Wordsworth, Here we are, transplanted from our native soil. I thought we never could have been torn up from the Temple. Indeed it was an ugly wrench, but like a tooth, now 'tis out and I am easy. We never can strike root so deep in any other ground. This, where we are, is a light bit of gardener's mold, and if they take us up from it, it will cost no blood and groans like mandrakes pull'd up. We are in the individual spot I like best in all this great city. The theatres with all [a few words cut away: Talfourd has "their noises. Convent Garden"] dearer to me than any gardens of Alcinous, where we are morally sure of the earliest peas and 'sparagus. Bow Street, where the thieves are examined, within a few yards of us. Mary had not been here four and twenty hours before she saw a Thief. She sits at the window working, and casually throwing out her eyes, she sees a concourse of people coming this way, with a constable to conduct the solemnity. These little incidents agreeably diversify a female life. It is a delicate subject, but is Mr. * * * really married? and has he found a gargle to his mind? O how funny he did talk to me about her, in terms of such mild quiet whispering speculative profligacy. But did the animalcule and she crawl over the rubric together, or did they not? Mary has brought her part of this letter to an orthodox and loving conclusion, which is very well, for I have no room for pansies and remembrances. What a nice holyday I got on Wednesday by favor of a princess dying. [A line and signature cut away.]

　　[The Lambs' house in Russell Street is now (1912) a fruiterer's: it has been rebuilt. Russell Street, Covent Garden, in those days was divided into Great Russell Street (from the Market to Brydges Street, now Catherine Street) and Little Russell Street, (from Brydges Street to Drury Lane). The brazier, or ironmonger, was Mr. Owen, Nos. 20 and 21.

　　The Wordsworths had moved to Rydal Mount in 1813.

　　"I am very sorry for Mr. De Quincey." Probably a reference to one of the opium-eater's illnesses.

　　It was at Littlehampton that Coleridge met Henry Francis Cary, the translator of Dante, afterwards one of Lamb's friends.

　　"Spot I like best in all this great city." See Vol. I. of this edition, for a little essay by Lamb on places of residence in London.

　　"Mr. * * *." One can but conjecture as to these asterisks. De Quincey, who was very small, married at the close of 1816.

　　"A princess dying"—Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Coburg. She was buried, amid national lamentation, on November 19, 1817.

　　Here should come a letter from Lamb to Ayrton dated November 25, 1817, which Lamb holds is peculiarly neatly worded.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5