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　　LETTER 111

　　CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN RICKMAN

　　Saturday Morning, July 16th, 1803.

　　Dear Rickman,—I enclose you a wonder, a letter from the shades. A dead body wants to return, and be inrolled inter vivos. 'Tis a gentle ghost, and in this Galvanic age it may have a chance.

　　Mary and I are setting out for the Isle of Wight. We make but a short stay, and shall pass the time betwixt that place and Portsmouth, where Fenwick is. I sadly wanted to explore the Peak this Summer; but Mary is against steering without card or compass, and we should be at large in Darbyshire.

　　We shall be at home this night and to-morrow, if you can come and take a farewell pipe.

　　I regularly transmitted your Notices to the "Morning Post," but they have not been duly honoured. The fault lay not in me.—

　　Yours truly,

　　C. LAMB.

　　[I cannot explain the reference to the dead body. Mr. Bertram Dobell considers it to apply to an article which he believes Lamb to have written, called "An Appeal from the Shades," printed in the London Magazine, New Series, Vol. V. (see Sidelights on Charles Lamb, 1903, pages 140-152). I cannot, however, think that Lamb could write in 1803 in the deliberate manner of that essay; that the "Appeal" is by him; or that the reference in the letter is to an essay at all. I have no real theory to put forward; but it once occurred to me that the letter from the shades was from George Burnett, who had quarrelled with Rickman, may reasonably be believed to have threatened suicide, and had now possibly appealed to his mercy through Lamb. Later, Burnett entered the militia as a surgeon, and at the beginning of 1804 he left for Poland.

　　Following this should come a letter from Lamb to Rickman, dated July 27, 1803. It is part of one from Captain Burney describing the adventures of the Burneys and Lambs at Cowes. Lamb, says the Captain, on their way to Newport "very ingeniously and unconsciously cast loose the fastenings of the mast, so that mast, sprit, sails, and all the rest tumbled overboard with a crash." Lamb on his part is amusing about the Captain and Martin Burney, and says he longs for Holborn scenery again.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5