[Lamb's friend Walter Wilson was beginning his _Memoirs of the Life and
Times of Daniel Defoe_, 1830. The passage sent to him in this letter by
Lamb he printed in Vol. III., page 428. Some years later Lamb sent
Wilson a further criticism. See also letter below for the reference to
_Roxana_.

Dodwell we have met. Of Wadd we have no information, except, according
to Crabb Robinson's _Diary_, that he once accidentally discharged a pen
full of ink into Lamb's eye and that Lamb wrote this epigram upon him:--

What Wadd knows, God knows,
But God knows _what_ Wadd knows.]



LETTER 303

CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON

[Dated at end: 23 December 1822.]

Dear Sir--I have been so distracted with business and one thing or
other, I have not had a quiet quarter of an hour for epistolary
purposes. Christmas too is come, which always puts a rattle into my
morning scull. It is a visiting unquiet un-Quakerish season. I get more
and more in love with solitude, and proportionately hampered with
company. I hope you have some holydays at this period. I have one day,
Christmas day, alas! too few to commemorate the season. All work and no
play dulls me. Company is not play, but many times hard work. To play,