“December 5, 1826.—Spent the evening at Lamb’s. When I went in, they (Charles and his sister) were alone, playing at cards together.

“I took up a book on the table—

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‘Almack’s’—and Lamb said—‘Ay; that must be all max to the lovers of scandal.’

“Speaking of Northcote, he related a story of him, illustrating his love for doing and saying little malicious things. It was at a party at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s, where Boswell was present, and they were talking of Malone, and somebody said that Malone seemed to live in Shakespeare, and not to have a feeling or thought connected with anything else; upon which Northcote said—‘Then he must have been the meanest of mankind. The man who sets up any other man as a sort of God, and worships him to the exclusion of all other things and thoughts, must be the meanest of men;—and everybody,’ said Northcote (who was himself the original relator of the story), ‘everybody turned and looked at Boswell.’

“We spoke of L. E. L., and Lamb said—‘If she belonged to me, I would lock her up and feed her on bread and water till she left off writing poetry. A female poet, or female author of any kind, ranks below an actress, I think.’

“—— was mentioned, and Lamb said

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he seemed to him to be a sort of L. E. L. in pantaloons.

“Bernard Barton was mentioned, and Lamb said that he did not write nonsense, at any rate—which all the rest of them did (meaning the Magazine poets of the day). He was dull enough; but not nonsensical. ‘He writes English, too,’ said Lamb, ‘which they do not.’

“H. C. R. came in about half-past eight, and put a stop to all further conversation— keeping all the talk to himself.

“Speaking of some German story, in which a man is made to meet himself—he himself having changed forms with some one else—the talk turned on what we should think of ourselves, if we could see ourselves without knowing that it was ourselves. R. said that he had all his life felt a sort of horror come over him every time he caught a sight of his own face in the glass; and that he was almost afraid to shave himself for the same reason. He said that he often wondered how anybody could sustain an intimacy with, much less feel a friendship for, a man with such a face. Lamb said—‘I hope you have

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mercy on the barbers, and always shave yourself.’

“Speaking of names, Lamb said—‘John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster,’ was the grandest name in the world. On this R. spoke of a Spanish pamphlet he had lately met with, describing the Reformation, in which all the English names were changed to Spanish ones, and the fine effect it had. It began by relating that a great prince named Don Henriquez (Henry VIII.) was married to a beautiful princess called La Donna Catalina (Queen Catherine)—that he was under the influence of a wily priest named il Cardinal Bolseo (Wolsey), who advised him to divorce his chaste wife la Donna Catalina, and unite himself to a foul though beautiful witch named La Donna Anna Volena (Anna Boleyn). Jane Seymour was called La Donna Joanna Sumaro, and her house (at Greenwich) the castle of Grenuccio.

“Friday, July 13.—Spent the evening at Leigh Hunt’s, with the Lambs, Atherstone, Mrs. Shelley, and the Gliddons. Lamb talked admirably about Dryden and some of the older poets, in particular of Davenant’s

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Gondibert. Of this Hunt wanted to show that it consisted almost entirely of monosyllables, which give a most heavy and monotonous effect to the versification; and he read some passages to that effect. Lamb would not admit this, and he read an admirable passage in reply, about a Museum of Natural Curiosities in which Man, the pretended Lord of all the other creatures, hung by the wall, dry, like all the rest, and even Woman, the Lord of Man, hung there too—‘and she dried by him.’ The effect of the passage was prodigious. . . .

“He (Lamb) spoke of Dryden as a prodigious person, so far as his wonderful power of versification went, but not a first-rate poet, or even capable of appreciating such—giving instances from his prefaces in proof of this. He spoke of Dryden’s prefaces as the finest pieces of criticism, nevertheless, that had ever been written, and the better for being contradictory to each other, because not founded on any pretended rules.

“Hunt was asking how it was necessary to manage in order to get Coleridge to come and dine. Lamb replied that he believed he (Cole-

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ridge) was under a kind of watch and ward—alluding to the watchful care taken of him by the Gilmans, with whom he was then residing. ‘Ah,’ said H., ‘vain is the watch (Mrs. G.), and bootless is the ward’ (Mr. G.), who always wore shoes.

“Lamb repeated one of his own enormous puns. He had met Procter, and speaking of his little girl (then an infant), Procter said they had called her Adelaide. ‘Ah,’ said Lamb, ‘a very good name for her—Addle-head.’”