Your obliged servant,
C. LAMB.
[Addressed to "Mrs. Williams, W.B. Donne, Esq., Matteshall, East
Dereham, Norfolk."
Mr. Wing was probably Miss Isola's doctor. Mr. Donne was William Bodham
Donne (1807-1882), the friend of Edward FitzGerald, and Examiner of
Plays.
This was Lamb's acrostic-epitaph on Mrs. Williams:—
Grace Joanna here doth lie:
Reader, wonder not that I
Ante-date her hour of rest.
Can I thwart her wish exprest,
Ev'n unseemly though the laugh
Jesting with an Epitaph?
On her bones the turf lie lightly,
And her rise again be brightly!
No dark stain be found upon her—
No, there will not, on mine honour—
Answer that at least I can.
Would that I, thrice happy man,
In as spotless garb might rise,
Light as she will climb the skies,
Leaving the dull earth behind,
In a car more swift than wind.
All her errors, all her failings,
(Many they were not) and ailings,
Sleep secure from Envy's railings.
Here should come an undated note from Lamb to Basil Montagu, in which Lamb asks for help for Hone in his Coffee-House. "If you can help a worthy man you will have two worthy men obliged to you." Hone, having fallen upon bad times, Lamb helped in the scheme to establish him in the Grasshopper Coffee-House, at 13 Gracechurch Street (see next letter).]