Martin Burney is as odd as ever.  We had a dispute about the word “heir,” which I contended was pronounced like “air;” he said that might be in common parlance; or that we might so use it, speaking of the “Heir-at-Law,” a comedy; but that in the Law Courts it was necessary to give it a full aspiration, and to say Hayer; he thought it might even vitiate a cause, if a Counsel pronounced it otherwise.  In conclusion, he “would consult Serjeant Wilde;” who gave it against him.  Sometimes he falleth into the water, sometimes into the fire.  He came down here, and insisted on reading Virgil’s “Eneid” all through with me (which he did,) because a Counsel must know Latin.  Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. John, because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court of Justice.  A third time, he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favoredly, because “we did not know how indispensable it was for a Barrister to do all those sort of things well.  Those little things were of more consequence than we supposed.”  So he goes on, harassing about the way to prosperity, and losing it.  With a long head, but somewhat a wrong one—­harum-scarum.  Why does not his guardian angel look to him?  He deserves one—­:  may be, he has tired him out.

I am——­with this long scrawl, but I thought in your exile, you might like a letter.  Commend me to all the wonders in Derbyshire, and tell the devil I humbly kiss—­my hand to him.  Yours ever,

C. LAMB.

["Free Thoughts.”  The version in Ayrton’s album differs a little from this, the principal difference being in line 13, “primitive” for “un-Spaniardised.”  Lamb’s story of the origin of the verses is not necessarily correct.  I fancy that he had written them for Novello before he produced them in reply to Ayrton’s challenge.  When sending the poem to Ayrton in a letter at this time, not available for this edition (written apparently just after Novello had paid the visit, referred to above), Lamb wrote that it was written to gratify Novello.

Mary Lamb (or Charles Lamb, personating her) appended the following postscript to the verses in Novello’s album:—­

      The reason why my brother’s so severe,
      Vincentio is—­my brother has no ear: 
      And Caradori her mellifluous throat
      Might stretch in vain to make him learn a note. 
      Of common tunes he knows not anything,
      Nor “Rule, Britannia” from “God save the King.” 
      He rail at Handel!  He the gamut quiz! 
      I’d lay my life he knows not what it is. 
      His spite at music is a pretty whim—­
      He loves not it, because it loves not him.

M. LAMB.

“Serjeant Wilde"-Thomas Wilde (1782-1855), afterwards Lord Truro, a friend of Lamb’s, who is said to have helped him with squibs in the Newark election in 1829, when Martin Burney was among his supporters (see Vol.  V. of my large edition, page 341).

Here had I permission, I would print Lamb’s letter to Ayrton, given in the Boston Bibliophile edition, incorporating the same poem.]