LETTER 88
CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS MANNING
[August,] 1801.
Dear Manning,—I have forborne writing so long (and so have you, for the matter of that), until I am almost ashamed either to write or to forbear any longer. But as your silence may proceed from some worse cause than neglect—from illness, or some mishap which may have befallen you—I begin to be anxious. You may have been burnt out, or you may have married, or you may have broken a limb, or turned country parson; any of these would be excuse sufficient for not coming to my supper. I am not so unforgiving as the nobleman in "Saint Mark." For me, nothing new has happened to me, unless that the poor "Albion" died last Saturday of the world's neglect, and with it the fountain of my puns is choked up for ever.
All the Lloyds wonder that you do not write to them. They apply to me for the cause. Relieve me from this weight of ignorance, and enable me to give a truly oracular response.
I have been confined some days with swelled cheek and rheumatism—they divide and govern me with a viceroy-headache in the middle. I can neither write nor read without great pain. It must be something like obstinacy that I choose this time to write to you in after many months interruption.
I will close my letter of simple inquiry with an epigram on Mackintosh, the "Vindiciae Gallicae"-man—who has got a place at last—one of the last I did for the "Albion";—
"Though thou'rt like Judas, an apostate black,
In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack;
When he had gotten his ill-purchas'd pelf,
He went away, and wisely hanged himself:
This thou may do at last, yet much I doubt,
If thou hast any Bowels to gush out!"
Yours, as ever,