Was Coleridge often with you? or did your brother and Col. argue long arguments, till between the two great arguers there grew a little coolness?—or perchance the mighty friendship between Coleridge and your Sovereign Governor, Sir Alexander Ball, might create a kind of jealousy, for we fancy something of a coldness did exist, from the little mention ever made of C. in your brother's letters.
Write us, my good girl, a long, gossiping letter, answering all these foolish questions—and tell me any silly thing you can recollect—any, the least particular, will be interesting to us, and we will never tell tales out of school: but we used to wonder and wonder, how you all went on; and when you was coming home we said, "Now we shall hear all from Sarah."
God bless you, my dear friend.
I am ever your affectionate
MARY LAMB.
If you have sent Charles any commissions he has not executed, write me word—he says he has lost or mislaid a letter desiring him to inquire about a wig.
Write two letters—one of business and pensions, and one all about Sarah
Stoddart and Malta. Is Mr. Moncrief doing well there?
Wednesday morning.
We have got a picture of Charles; do you think your brother would like to have it? If you do, can you put us in a way how to send it?
[Mrs. Stoddart was the widow of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Mr. Wray and Mr. Pearce were presumably gentlemen connected with the Admiralty or in some way concerned with the pension. "William" is still the early William—not William Hazlitt, whom Sarah was destined to marry. Mr. Moncrieff was Mrs. John Stoddart's eldest brother, who was a King's Advocate in the Admiralty Court at Malta. The picture of Charles might be some kind of reproduction of Hazlitt's portrait of him, painted in the preceding year; but more probably, I think, a few copies of Hancock's drawing, made in 1798 for Cottle, had been struck off.]