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　　LETTER 423

　　CHARLES LAMB TO SIR JOHN STODDART

　　(Same letter: Lamb's share)

　　Dear Knight—Old Acquaintance—'Tis with a violence to the pure imagination (vide the "Excursion" passim) that I can bring myself to believe I am writing to Dr. Stoddart once again, at Malta. But the deductions of severe reason warrant the proceeding. I write from Enfield, where we are seriously weighing the advantages of dulness over the over-excitement of too much company, but have not yet come to a conclusion. What is the news? for we see no paper here; perhaps you can send us an old one from Malta. Only, I heard a butcher in the market-place whisper something about a change of ministry. I don't know who's in or out, or care, only as it might affect you. For domestic doings, I have only to tell, with extreme regret, that poor Elisa Fenwick (that was)—Mrs. Rutherford—is dead; and that we have received a most heart-broken letter from her mother—left with four grandchildren, orphans of a living scoundrel lurking about the pothouses of Little Russell Street, London: they and she—God help 'em!—at New York. I have just received Godwin's third volume of the Republic, which only reaches to the commencement of the Protectorate. I think he means to spin it out to his life's thread. Have you seen Fearn's Anti-Tooke? I am no judge of such things—you are; but I think it very clever indeed. If I knew your bookseller, I'd order it for you at a venture: 'tis two octavos, Longman and Co. Or do you read now? Tell it not in the Admiralty Court, but my head aches hesterno vino. I can scarce pump up words, much less ideas, congruous to be sent so far. But your son must have this by to-night's post.[Here came a passage relating to an escapade of young Stoddart, then at the Charterhouse, which, probably through Lamb's intervention, was treated leniently. Lamb helped him—with his imposition— Gray's "Elegy" into Greek elegiacs.] Manning is gone to Rome, Naples, etc., probably to touch at Sicily, Malta, Guernsey, etc.; but I don't know the map. Hazlitt is resident at Paris, whence he pours his lampoons in safety at his friends in England. He has his boy with him. I am teaching Emma Latin. By the time you can answer this, she will be qualified to instruct young ladies: she is a capital English reader: and S.T.C. acknowledges that a part of a passage in Milton she read better than he, and part he read best, her part being the shorter. But, seriously, if Lady St——— (oblivious pen, that was about to write Mrs.!) could hear of such a young person wanted (she smatters of French, some Italian, music of course), we'd send our loves by her. My congratulations and assurances of old esteem. C.L.

　　[Stoddart had been appointed in 1826 Chief-Justice and Justice of the Vice-Admiralty Court in Malta and had been knighted in the same year. His daughter Isabella had just married. Lady Stoddart's literary efforts did not, I think, reach print.

　　"The deductions of severe reason." See the "ation from Cottle in the letter to Manning of November, 1802.

　　"A change of ministry." On Liverpool's resignation early in 1827 Canning had been called in to form a new Ministry, which he effected by an alliance with the Whigs.

　　"Godwin's Republic"—History of the Commonwealth of England, in four volumes, 1824-1828.

　　"Fearn's Anti-Tooke"—Anti-Tooke; or, An Analysis of the Principles and Structure of Language Exemplified in the English Tongue, 1824.

　　Here should come a note from Lamb to Hone, dated August 10, 1827, in which Lamb expresses regret for Matilda Hone's illness.] The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 6