house. He visited the Universities, in which he much delighted: he
fraternized with many of the contributors to the "London Magazine." He
received the letters and calls of his admirers--strangers and others.
These were now much extended in number, by the publication of the Essays
of Elia. I was in the habit of seeing him very frequently at his home: I
met him also at Mr. Cary's, at Leigh Hunt's, at Novello's, at Haydon's,
once at Hazlitt's, and elsewhere. It must have been about this time that
one of his visits (which always took place when the students were absent)
was made to Oxford, where he met George Dyer, dreaming amongst the
quadrangles, as he has described in his pleasant paper called "Oxford in
the Vacation."

Lamb's letters to correspondents are perhaps not quite so frequent now as
formerly. He writes occasionally to his old friends; to Wordsworth, and
Southey, and Coleridge; also to Manning, who is still in China, and to
whom in December, 1815, he had sent one of his best and most
characteristic letters, describing the (imaginary) death and decrepitude
of his correspondent's friends in England; although he takes care (the
next day) to tell him that his first was a "lying letter." Indeed, that
letter itself, humorous as it is, is so obviously manufactured in the
fabulous district of hyperbole, that it requires no disavowal. Manning,
however, returns to England not long afterwards; and then the
correspondence, if less humorous, is also less built up of
improbabilities. He corresponds also with Mr. Barron Field, who is
relegated to the Judicial Bench in New South Wales. Of him he inquires
about "The Land of Thieves;" he wants to know if their poets be not
plagiarists; and suggests that half the truth which his letters contain
"will be converted into lies" before they reach his correspondent. Mr.
Field is the gentleman to whom the pleasant paper on "Distant
Correspondents" is addressed.