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　　LETTER 55

　　CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

　　[? Spring, 1800.]

　　By some fatality, unusual with me, I have mislaid the list of books which you want. Can you, from memory, easily supply me with another?

　　I confess to Statius, and I detained him wilfully, out of a reverent regard to your style. Statius, they tell me, is turgid. As to that other Latin book, since you know neither its name nor subject, your wants (I crave leave to apprehend) cannot be very urgent. Meanwhile, dream that it is one of the lost Decades of Livy.

　　Your partiality to me has led you to form an erroneous opinion as to the measure of delight you suppose me to take in obliging. Pray, be careful that it spread no further. 'Tis one of those heresies that is very pregnant. Pray, rest more satisfied with the portion of learning which you have got, and disturb my peaceful ignorance as little as possible with such sort of commissions.

　　Did you never observe an appearance well known by the name of the man in the moon? Some scandalous old maids have set on foot a report that it is Endymion. Dr. Stoddart talks of going out King's Advocate to Malta. He has studied the Civil and Canon Law just three canon months, to my knowledge. Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.

　　Your theory about the first awkward step a man makes being the consequence of learning to dance, is not universal. We have known many youths bred up at Christ's, who never learned to dance, yet the world imputes to them no very graceful motions. I remember there was little Hudson, the immortal precentor of St. Paul's, to teach us our quavers: but, to the best of my recollection, there was no master of motions when we were at Christ's.

　　Farewell, in haste.

　　C.L.

　　[Talfourd does not date this letter, merely remarking that it belongs to the present period. Canon Ainger dated it June 22, 1800; but this I think cannot be right when we take into consideration Letter 60 and what it says about Lamb's last letter to Coleridge (clearly that of May 12), and the time that has since elapsed. The birth of Charles Lloyd's first child, July 31, gives us the latest date to which Letter 60 could belong.

　　"Your theory …" This may have been contained in one of Coleridge's letters, now lost; I do not find it in any of the known Morning Post articles.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5