LETTER 575
CHARLES LAMB TO MRS. WILLIAM AYRTON
[P.M. April (16), 1833.]
Dear Mrs. Ayrton, I do not know which to admire most, your kindness, or your patience, in copying out that intolerable rabble of panegryc from over the Atlantic. By the way, now your hand is in, I wish you would copy out for me the l3th l7th and 24th of Barrow's sermons in folio, and all of Tillotson's (folio also) except the first, which I have in Manuscript, and which, you know, is Ayrton's favorite. Then—but I won't trouble you any farther just now. Why does not A come and see me? Can't he and Henry Crabbe concert it? 'Tis as easy as lying is to me. Mary's kindest love to you both.
ELIA.
[The letter is accompanied by a note in the writing of William Scrope
Ayrton, the son of William Ayrton, copied from Mrs. Ayrton's Diary:—
"March 17, 1833.—Copied a critique upon Elia's works from the Mirror of
America a sort of news paper.">[