on the subject. He did not write the book.

Barton had a plan to provide Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets with a
Quaker pendant. He did not carry it out.

Here might come an undated and unpublished letter from Lamb to Basil
Montagu, which is of little interest except as referring to Miss James,
Mary Lamb's nurse. Lamb says that she was one of four sisters, daughters
of a Welsh clergyman, who all became nurses at Mrs. Warburton's, Hoxton,
whither, I imagine, Mary Lamb had often retired. Mrs. Parsons, one of
the sisters, became Mary Lamb's nurse when, some time after Lamb's
death, she moved to 41 Alpha Road, Mrs. Parsons' house. The late John
Hollingshead, great-nephew of these ladies, says in his interesting
book, _My Lifetime_, that their father was rector of Beguildy, in
Shropshire.]



LETTER 304

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN HOWARD PAYNE

[January, 1823.]

Dear Payne--Your little books are most acceptable. 'Tis a delicate
edition. They are gone to the binder's. When they come home I shall have
two--the "Camp" and "Patrick's Day"--to read for the first time. I may
say three, for I never read the "School for Scandal." "_Seen_ it I have,
and in its happier days." With the books Harwood left a truncheon or
mathematical instrument, of which we have not yet ascertained the use.