worthy gentlemen are alike out of my line. To-morrow I shall be less
suspensive and in better cue to write, so good bye at present.

Friday Evening.--That execrable aristocrat and knave Richardson has
given me an absolute refusal of leave! The _poor man_ cannot guess at my
disappointment. Is it not hard, "this dread dependance on the low bred
mind?" Continue to write to me tho', and I must be content--Our loves
and best good wishes attend upon you both.

LAMB.

Savory did return, but there are 2 or 3 more ill and absent, which was
the plea for refusing me. I will never commit my peace of mind by
depending on such a wretch for a favor in future, so shall never have
heart to ask for holidays again. The man next him in office, Cartwright,
furnished him with the objections.

C. LAMB.

[The Dactyls were Coleridge's only in the third stanza; the remainder
were Southey's. The poem is known as "The Soldier's Wife," printed in
Southey's _Poems_, 1797. Later Southey revised the verses. _The
Anti-Jacobin_ had a parody of them.

Young Savory was probably a relative of Hester Savory, whom we shall
meet later. He entered the East India House on the same day that Lamb
did.

We do not know what were the lines from Wither which Coleridge had sent
to Lamb; but Lamb himself eventually did much to bring him and the elder