Well, if we ever do move, we have encumbrances the less to impede us; all our furniture has faded under the auctioneer’s hammer, going for nothing, like the tarnished frippery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left to bless us.  Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we must go out of it.  I would live in London shirtless, bookless.  Henry Crabb is at Rome; advices to that effect have reached Bury.  But by solemn legacy he bequeathed at parting (whether he should live or die) a turkey of Suffolk to be sent every succeeding Christmas to us and divers other friends.  What a genuine old bachelor’s action!  I fear he will find the air of Italy too classic.  His station is in the Hartz forest; his soul is be-Goethed.  Miss Kelly we never see,—­Talfourd not this half year; the latter flourishes, but the exact number of his children, God forgive me, I have utterly forgotten:  we single people are often out in our count there.  Shall I say two?  We see scarce anybody.  Can I cram loves enough to you all in this little O?  Excuse particularizing.

C.L.

[1] See preceding letter.

[2] Here was inserted a sketch answering to the description.

CIII.

TO MRS. HAZLITT.

May 24, 1830.

Mary’s love?  Yes.  Mary Lamb quite well.

Dear Sarah,—­I found my way to Northaw on Thursday and a very good woman behind a counter, who says also that you are a very good lady, but that the woman who was with you was naught.  We travelled with one of those troublesome fellow-passengers in a stage-coach that is called a well-informed man.  For twenty miles we discoursed about the properties of steam, probabilities of carriages by ditto, till all my science, and more than all, was exhausted, and I was thinking of escaping my torment by getting up on the outside, when, getting into Bishops Stortford, my gentleman, spying some farming land, put an unlucky question to me,—­What sort of a crop of turnips I thought we should have this year?  Emma’s eyes turned to me to know what in the world I could have to say; and she burst into a violent fit of laughter, maugre her pale, serious cheeks, when, with the greatest gravity, I replied that it depended, I believed, upon boiled legs of mutton.  This clenched our conversation; and my gentleman, with a face half wise, half in scorn, troubled us with no more conversation, scientific or philosophical, for the remainder of the journey.

Ayrton was here yesterday, and as learned to the full as my fellow-traveller.  What a pity that he will spoil a wit and a devilish pleasant fellow (as he is) by wisdom!  He talked on Music; and by having read Hawkins and Burney recently I was enabled to talk of names, and show more knowledge than he had suspected I possessed; and in the end he begged me to shape my thoughts upon paper, which I did after he was gone, and sent him “Free Thoughts on Some Eminent Composers.”