cleared away a good deal besides; and sent this copy, written _all out_
(with alterations, &c., _requiring judgment_) in one day and a half! I
sent it last night, and am in weekly expectation of the tolling-bell and
death-warrant.

This is all my Lunnon news. Send me some from the _banks of Cam_, as the
poets delight to speak, especially George Dyer, who has no other name,
nor idea, nor definition of Cambridge: namely, its being a market-town,
sending members to Parliament, never entered into his definition: it was
and is, simply, the banks of the Cam or the fair Cam, as Oxford is the
banks of the Isis or the fair Isis. Yours in all humility, most
illustrious Trismegist,

C. LAMB.

(Read on; there's more at the bottom.)

You ask me about the "Farmer's Boy"--don't you think the fellow who
wrote it (who is a shoemaker) has a poor mind? Don't you find he is
always silly about _poor Giles_, and those abject kind of phrases, which
mark a man that looks up to wealth? None of Burns's poet-dignity. What
do you think? I have just opened him; but he makes me sick. Dyer knows
the shoemaker (a damn'd stupid hound in company); but George promises to
introduce him indiscriminately to all friends and all combinations.

[Mr. Crisp was Manning's landlord, a barber in St. Mary's Passage,
Cambridge. In one letter at least Lamb spells his name Crips--a joke he
was fond of.

"Rickman" was John Rickman (1771-1840), already a friend of Southey's,