LETTER 429
CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN
[P.M. September 18, 1827.]
My dear, and now more so, JOHN—
How that name smacks! what an honest, full, English, and yet withal holy and apostolic sound it bears, above the methodistical priggish Bishoppy name of Timothy, under which I had obscured your merits!
What I think of the paternal verses, you shall read within, which I assure you is not pen praise but heart praise.
It is the gem of the Dibdin Muses.
I have got all my books into my new house, and their readers in a fortnight will follow, to whose joint converse nobody shall be more welcome than you, and any of yours.
The house is perfection to our use and comfort.
Milton is come. I wish Wordsworth were here to meet him. The next importation is of pots and saucepans, window curtains, crockery and such base ware.
The pleasure of moving, when Becky moves for you. O the moving Becky!
I hope you will come and warm the house with the first.
From my temporary domicile, Enfield.
ELIA, that "is to go."—
[The paternal verses were probably a contribution by Charles
Dibdin the Younger for Emma Isola's album. The Lambs were
just moving to Enfield for good, as they hoped (see next letter),
Milton was the portrait.]