May 1st [1821],

Mr. Gilman's, Highgate.

Mr. C.--I will not fail you on Friday by six, and Mary, perhaps,
earlier. I very much wish to meet "Master Mathew," and am much obliged
to the G----s for the opportunity. Our kind respects to them
always.--ELIA.

Extract from a MS. note of S.T.C. in my Beaumont and Fletcher, dated
April 17th 1807.

_Midnight_.

"God bless you, dear Charles Lamb, I am dying; I feel I have not many
weeks left."


[Master Mathew is in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His Humour."

Lamb's "Beaumont and Fletcher" is in the British Museum. The note quoted
by Lamb is not there, or perhaps it is one that has been crossed out.
This still remains: "N.B. I shall not be long here, Charles! I gone, you
will not mind my having spoiled a book in order to leave a Relic.
S.T.C., Oct. 1811."]



LETTER 273