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　　LETTER 225

　　CHARLES LAMB TO MATILDA BETHAM

　　Dr Miss Betham,—All this while I have been tormenting myself with the thought of having been ungracious to you, and you have been all the while accusing yourself. Let us absolve one another & be quits. My head is in such a state from incapacity for business that I certainly know it to be my duty not to undertake the veriest trifle in addition. I hardly know how I can go on. I have tried to get some redress by explaining my health, but with no great success. No one can tell how ill I am, because it does not come out to the exterior of my face, but lies in my scull deep & invisible. I wish I was leprous & black jaundiced skin-over, and [? or] that all was as well within as my cursed looks. You must not think me worse than I am. I am determined not to be overset, but to give up business rather and get 'em to allow me a trifle for services past. O that I had been a shoe-maker or a baker, or a man of large independ't fortune. O darling Laziness! heaven of Epicurus! Saints Everlasting Rest! that I could drink vast potations of thee thro' unmeasured Eternity. Otium cum vel sine dignitate. Scandalous, dishonorable, any-kind-of-repose. I stand not upon the dignified sort. Accursed damned desks, trade, commerce, business—Inventions of that old original busybody brainworking Satan, Sabbathless restless Satan—

　　A curse relieves. Do you ever try it?

　　A strange Letter this to write to a Lady, but mere honey'd sentences will not distill. I dare not ask who revises in my stead. I have drawn you into a scrape. I am ashamed, but I know no remedy. My unwellness must be my apology. God bless you (tho' he curse the India House & fire it to the ground) and may no unkind Error creep into Marie, may all its readers like it as well as I do & everybody about you like its kind author no worse. Why the devil am I never to have a chance of scribbling my own free thoughts, verse or prose, again? Why must I write of Tea & Drugs & Price Goods & bales of Indigo—farewell.

　　C. LAMB.

　　[Written at head of Letter on margin the following:—]

　　Mary goes to her Place on Sunday—I mean your maid, foolish Mary. She wants a very little brains only to be an excellent Serv. She is excellently calculated for the country, where nobody has brains.

　　[Mr. Ernest Betham, in A House of Letters, dates the foregoing June 1, 1816; but I place it here none the less.

　　In the passage concerning work and leisure we see another hint of the sonnet on "Work" which Lamb was to write a little later.

　　Here should come two notes to William Ayrton, printed by Mr. Macdonald, referring to the musical use of the word "air."] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5