您可以在百度里搜索“The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5 艾草文学(www.321553.xyz)”查找最新章节！

　　LETTER 46

　　CHARLES LAMB TO ROBERT SOUTHEY

　　Oct. 31st, 1799.

　　Dear Southey,—I have but just got your letter, being returned from Herts, where I have passed a few red-letter days with much pleasure. I would describe the county to you, as you have done by Devonshire, but alas! I am a poor pen at that same. I could tell you of an old house with a tapestry bed-room, the "judgment of Solomon" composing one pannel, and "Actæon spying Diana naked" the other. I could tell of an old marble hall, with Hogarth's prints and the Roman Caesars in marble hung round. I could tell of a wilderness, and of a village church, and where the bones of my honoured grandam lie; but there are feelings which refuse to be translated, sulky aborigines, which will not be naturalised in another soil. Of this nature are old family faces and scenes of infancy.

　　I have given your address, and the books you want, to the Arches; they will send them as soon as they can get them, but they do not seem quite familiar to [? with] their names. I have seen Gebor! Gebor aptly so denominated from Geborish, quasi Gibberish. But Gebor hath some lucid intervals. I remember darkly one beautiful simile veiled in uncouth phrases about the youngest daughter of the Ark. I shall have nothing to communicate, I fear, to the Anthology. You shall have some fragments of my play, if you desire them, but I think I would rather print it whole. Have you seen it, or shall I lend you a copy? I want your opinion of it.

　　I must get to business, so farewell. My kind remembrances to Edith.

　　C. LAMB.

　　[Lamb had probably been staying at Widford. Many years later he described his Hertfordshire days in more than one essay (see the Elia essays "Mackery End" and "Blakesmoor in H——-shire" and "Dream-Children"). The old house was, of course, Blakesware. The wilderness, which lay at the back of the house, is, with Widford, mentioned in Rosamund Gray.

　　The Arches were the brothers Arch, the booksellers of Ludgate Hill.

　　Gebor stands for Gebir, Landor's poem, published in 1798. The simile in question would be this: from Book VII., lines 248-251:—

　　Never so eager, when the world was waves,

　　Stood the less daughter of the ark, and tried

　　(Innocent this temptation) to recall

　　With folded vest and casting arm the dove.

　　The reference to Southey's Anthology is to Vol. II., then in preparation. The play was now finished: it circulated in manuscript before being published in 1802.

　　In a letter to Robert Lloyd, dated December 17, 1799, Lamb thanks him for a present of porter, adding that wine makes him hot, and brandy drunk, but porter warms without intoxication.

　　Here should come an unpublished letter from Lamb to Charles Lloyd at Cambridge, asking for the return of his play. Kemble, he says, had offered to put it in the hands of the proprietor of Drury Lane, and therefore Lamb wishes to have a second copy in the house. Kemble, as it turned out, returned no answer for a year, and then he stated that he had lost the copy.

　　Lamb mentions Coleridge's settlement with his family in lodgings in the Adelphi. Coleridge, having returned from Germany and undertaken work for the Morning Post, took lodgings at 21 Buckingham Street, Strand, close to the Adelphi, in November, 1799.

　　The letter is interesting in containing the first mention of Manning, whom we are now to meet.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 5