printed in the _Examiner_, August 29, 1819.]



LETTER 291

CHARLES LAMB TO BARRON FIELD

Sept. 22, 1822.

My dear F.,--I scribble hastily at office. Frank wants my letter
presently. I & sister are just returned from Paris!! We have eaten
frogs. It has been such a treat! You know our monotonous general Tenor.
Frogs are the nicest little delicate things--rabbity-flavoured. Imagine
a Lilliputian rabbit! They fricassee them; but in my mind, drest
seethed, plain, with parsley and butter, would have been the decision of
Apicius. Shelley the great Atheist has gone down by water to eternal
fire! Hunt and his young fry are left stranded at Pisa, to be adopted by
the remaining duumvir, Lord Byron--his wife and 6 children & their maid.
What a cargo of Jonases, if they had foundered too! The only use I can
find of friends, is that they do to borrow money of you. Henceforth I
will consort with none but rich rogues. Paris is a glorious picturesque
old City. London looks mean and New to it, as the town of Washington
would, seen after _it_. But they have no St. Paul's or Westminster
Abbey. The Seine, so much despised by Cockneys, is exactly the size to
run thro' a magnificent street; palaces a mile long on one side, lofty
Edinbro' stone (O the glorious antiques!): houses on the other. The
Thames disunites London & Southwark. I had Talma to supper with me. He
has picked up, as I believe, an authentic portrait of Shakspere. He paid
a broker about £40 English for it. It is painted on the one half of a