feeling, good nature or a kind of whimsical peevishness, or twenty other
things which passed over it by turns, I cannot in the least be certain."

This is Mr. Willis's excellent picture of Lamb at that period. The guest
places a large arm-chair for Mary Lamb; Charles pulls it away, saying
gravely, "Mary, don't take it; it looks as if you were going to have a
tooth drawn." Miss Lamb was at that time very hard of hearing, and Charles
took advantage of her temporary deafness to impute various improbabilities
to her, which, however, were so obvious as to render any denial or
explanation unnecessary. Willis told Charles that he had bought a copy of
the "Elia" in America, in order to give to a friend. "What did you give
for it?" asked Lamb. "About seven and sixpence." "Permit me to pay you
that," said Lamb, counting out the money with earnestness on the table; "I
never yet wrote anything that could sell. I am the publisher's ruin. My
last poem won't sell,--not a copy. Have you seen it?" No; Willis had not.
"It's only eighteenpence, and I'll give you sixpence towards it," said
Lamb; and he described where Willis would find it, "sticking up in a shop
window in the Strand." Lamb ate nothing, but inquired anxiously for some
potted fish, which Mr. R---- used to procure for him. There was none in
the house; he therefore asked to see the cover of the pot which had
contained it; he thought it would do him good. It was brought, and on it
was a picture of the fish. Lamb kissed it, and then left the table, and
began to wander about the room, with an uncertain step, &c.

This visit must have taken place, I suppose, at or after the time when
Lamb was living at Colebrook Cottage; and the breakfast took place
probably in Mr. Henry Crabbe Robinson's chambers in the Temple, where I
first met Wordsworth.

In the year 1827 Lamb moved into a small house at Enfield, a "gamboge-