understood the first proposition in Euclid, but gave me over in despair
at the second."]




LETTER 48


CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING

Dec. 28th, 1799.

Dear Manning,--Having suspended my correspondence a decent interval, as
knowing that even good things may be taken to satiety, a wish cannot but
recur to learn whether you be still well and happy. Do all things
continue in the state I left them in Cambridge?

Do your night parties still flourish? and do you continue to bewilder
your company with your thousand faces running down through all the keys
of idiotism (like Lloyd over his perpetual harpsicord), from the smile
and the glimmer of half-sense and quarter-sense to the grin and hanging
lip of Betty Foy's own Johnny? And does the face-dissolving curfew sound
at twelve? How unlike the great originals were your petty terrors in the
postscript, not fearful enough to make a fairy shudder, or a Lilliputian
fine lady, eight months full of child, miscarry. Yet one of them, which
had more beast than the rest, I thought faintly resembled _one_ of your
brutifications. But, seriously, I long to see your own honest
Manning-face again. I did not mean a pun,--your _man's_ face, you will
be apt to say, I know your wicked will to pun. I cannot now write to