After an awful pause the comptroller said, “Don’t you think Newton a great genius?” I could not stand it any longer.  Keats put his head into my books.  Ritchie squeezed in a laugh.  Wordsworth seemed asking himself, “Who is this?” Lamb got up, and, taking a candle, said, “Sir, will you allow me to look at your phrenological development?” He then turned his back on the poor man, and at every question of the comptroller he chaunted: 

  “Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John,
  Went to bed with his breeches on.”

The man in office, finding Wordsworth did not know who he was, said in a spasmodic and half-chuckling anticipation of assured victory, “I have had the honour of some correspondence with you, Mr. Wordsworth.”  “With me, sir?” said Wordsworth, “not that I remember.”  “Don’t you, sir?  I am a comptroller of stamps.”  There was a dead silence—­the comptroller evidently thinking that was enough.  While we were waiting for Wordsworth’s reply, Lamb sung out: 

  “Hey diddle fiddle,
  The cat and the fiddle.”

“My dear Charles!” said Wordsworth—­

  “Diddle, diddle dumpling, my son John”—­

chaunted Lamb, and then, rising, exclaimed, “Do let me have another look at that gentleman’s organs.”  Keats and I hurried Lamb into the painting-room, shut the door, and gave way to inextinguishable laughter.  Monkhouse followed and tried to get Lamb away.  We went back, but the comptroller was irreconcilable.  We soothed and smiled and asked him to supper.  He stayed, though his dignity was sorely affected.  However, being a good-natured man, we parted all in good-humour, and no ill effects followed.

All the while, until Monkhouse succeeded, we could hear Lamb struggling in the painting-room and calling at intervals, “Who is that fellow?  Allow me to see his organs once more.”

It was indeed an immortal evening.  Wordsworth’s fine intonation as he quoted Milton and Virgil, Keats’s eager, inspired look, Lamb’s quaint sparkle of lambent humour, so speeded the stream of conversation that in my life I never passed a more delightful time.  All our fun was within bounds.  Not a word passed that an apostle might not have listened to.  It was a night worthy of the Elizabethan age.

“SIXPENNY JOKES” [Sidenote:  Charles Lamb]

There is no virtue like necessity, says the proverb.  If that be true, what a quantity of virtue there must be among the lower orders of people in this country!

* * * * *

A bench of Justices certainly gives us an idea of something wooden.  Shakespeare, in his Seven Ages, represents a Justice as made up with saws.

* * * * *

Locke compares the mind of a new-born infant to a sheet of white paper not yet written on.  It must be confessed that, whoever wrote upon Mr. A——­n’s mind has left large margins.