[Allsop and Procter may have been named as executors of Lamb's will at one time, but when it came to be proved the executors were Talfourd and Ryle, a fellow-clerk in the India House.]
LETTER 329
CHARLES LAMB TO BERNARD BARTON
[P.M. September 17, 1823.]
Dear Sir—I have again been reading your stanzas on Bloomfield, which are the most appropriate that can be imagined, sweet with Doric delicacy. I like that
Our more chaste Theocritus—
just hinting at the fault of the Grecian. I love that stanza ending with
Words phrases fashions pass away;
But Truth and nature live through all.
But I shall omit in my own copy the one stanza which alludes to Lord B.—I suppose. It spoils the sweetness and oneness of the feeling. Cannot we think of Burns, or Thompson, without sullying the thought with a reflection out of place upon Lord Rochester? These verses might have been inscribed upon a tomb; are in fact an epitaph; satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone. Besides, there is a quotation in it, always bad in verse; seldom advisable in prose.
I doubt if their having been in a Paper will not prevent T. and H. from insertion, but I shall have a thing to send in a day or two, and shall try them. Omitting that stanza, a very little alteration is want'g in the beginn'g of the next. You see, I use freedom. How happily (I flatter not!) you have bro't in his subjects; and, (I suppose) his favorite measure, though I am not acquainted with any of his writings but the Farmer's Boy. He dined with me once, and his manners took me exceedingly.