of great alarm: she was whimpering, and could only utter, "Poor Mr. Dyer!
Poor Mr. Dyer!" in tremulous tones. I went up stairs, aghast, and found
that the involuntary diver had been placed in bed, and that Miss Lamb had
administered brandy and water, as a well-established preventive against
cold. Dyer, unaccustomed to anything stronger than the "crystal spring,"
was sitting upright in the bed, perfectly delirious. His hair had been
rubbed up, and stood out like so many needles of iron gray. He did not
(like Falstaff) "babble of green fields," but of the "watery Neptune." "I
soon found out where I was," he cried out to me, laughing; and then he
went wandering on, his words taking flight into regions where no one could
follow. Charles Lamb has commemorated this immersion of his old friend, in
his (Elia) essay of "Amicus Redivivus."

In the summer of 1826 Lamb published, in "Blackwood's Magazine," a little
drama in one act, entitled "The Wife's Trial." It was founded on Crabbe's
poetical tale of "The Confidant;" and contains the germ of a plot, which
undoubtedly might have been worked out with more effect, if Lamb had
devoted sufficient labor to that object.

Amongst the remarkable persons whom Charles became acquainted with, in
these years, was Edward Irving. Lamb used to meet him at Coleridge's house
at Highgate, and elsewhere; and he came to the conclusion that he was (as
indeed he _was_) a fine, sincere, spirited man, terribly slandered. Edward
Irving, who issued, like a sudden light, from the obscure little town of
Annan, in Scotland, acquired, in the year 1822, a wide reputation in
London. He was a minister of the Scotch Church, and before he came to
England had acted as an assistant preacher to Dr. Chalmers. In one of
Charles's letters (in 1835) to Bernard Barton (who had evidently been
measuring Irving by a low Quaker standard), he takes the opportunity of
speaking of the great respect that he entertained for the Scotch minister.