of whose face almost interfered with its real intelligence. Yet he spoke
well, and with readiness, on any subject that he chose to discuss. He was
very intimate with Lamb, who latterly often dined with him, and was always
punctual. "By Cot's plessing we will not be absent at the Grace" (he
writes in 1834). Lamb's taste was very homely: he liked tripe and cow-
heel, and once, when he was suggesting a particular dish to his friend, he
wrote," We were talking of roast shoulder of mutton and onion sauce; but I
scorn to prescribe hospitalities. "Charles had great regard for Mr. Cary;
and in his last letter (written on his death-bed) he inquired for a book,
which he was very uneasy about, and which he thought he had left at Mrs.
Dyer's. "It is Mr. Cary's book" (he says), "and I would not lose it for
the world." Cary was entirely without vanity; and he, who had traversed
the ghastly regions of the Inferno, interchanged little courtesies on
equal terms with workers who had never travelled beyond the pages of "The
London Magazine." No one (it is said) who has performed anything great
ever looks big upon it.

Thomas Hood was there, almost silent except when he shot out some
irresistible pun, and disturbed the gravity of the company. Hood's labors
were poetic, but his sports were passerine. It is remarkable that he, who
was capable of jesting even on his own prejudices and predilections,
should not (like Catullus) have brought down the "Sparrow," and enclosed
him in an ode. Lamb admired and was very familiar with him. "What a
fertile genius he is!" (Charles Lamb writes to Bernard Barton), "and quiet
withal." He then expatiates particularly on Hood's sketch of "Very Deaf
indeed!" wherein a footpad has stopped an old gentleman, but cannot make
him understand what he wants, although the fellow is firing a pistol into
his ear trumpet. "You'd like him very much," he adds. Although Lamb liked
him very much, he was a little annoyed once by Hood writing a comical
essay in imitation of (and so much like) one of his own, that people