Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/264

 with the spoils of a predatory warfare, travelled far afield, extorting its tribute of verse. We find Lamb first paying, as was natural, his own tithes, and then actually aiding and abetting injustice by sending the book to Mr. Procter (Barry Cornwall), with an irresistible appeal for support.

"I have another favour to beg, which is the beggarliest of beggings; a few lines of verse for a young friend's album (six will be enough). M. Burney will tell you who I want 'em for. A girl of gold. Six lines—make 'em eight—signed Barry C. They need not be very good, as I chiefly want 'em as a foil to mine. But I shall be seriously obliged by any refuse scraps. We are in the last ages of the world, when St. Paul prophesied that women should be 'headstrong lovers of their own wills, having albums.' I fled hither to escape the albumean persecution, and had not been in my new house twenty-four hours when a daughter of the next house came in with a friend's album, to beg a contribution, and, the following day, intimated she had one of her own. Two more have sprung up since. 'If I take the wings of the morning,