LETTER 297
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LETTER 297
CHARLES LAMB TO SIR WALTER SCOTT
East India House, London, 29th October 1822.
Dear Sir,—I have to acknowledge your kind attention to my application to Mr. Haydon. I have transmitted your draft to Mr. G[odwin]'s committee as an anonymous contribution through me. Mr. Haydon desires his thanks and best respects to you, but was desirous that I should write to you on this occasion. I cannot pass over your kind expressions as to myself. It is not likely that I shall ever find myself in Scotland, but should the event ever happen, I should be proud to pay my respects to you in your own land. My disparagement of heaths and highlands—if I said any such thing in half earnest,—you must put down as a piece of the old Vulpine policy. I must make the most of the spot I am chained to, and console myself for my flat destiny as well as I am able. I know very well our mole-hills are not mountains, but I must cocker them up and make them look as big and as handsome as I can, that we may both be satisfied. Allow me to express the pleasure I feel on an occasion given me of writing to you, and to subscribe myself, dear sir, your obliged and respectful servant,
CHARLES LAMB.
[See note to the letter to Godwin above. Lamb and Scott never met. Talfourd, however, tells us that "he used to speak with gratitude and pleasure of the circumstances under which he saw him once in Fleet-street. A man, in the dress of a mechanic, stopped him just at Inner Temple-gate, and said, touching his hat, 'I beg your pardon, sir, but perhaps you would like to see Sir Walter Scott; that is he just crossing the road;' and Lamb stammered out his hearty thanks to his truly humane informer."
Mr. Lang has recently discovered that also in 1818 or thereabouts Sir Walter invited Lamb to Abbotsford.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6