Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/149

 Rh pain lest the gift of utterance should suddenly fail the orator in the middle, as it did me at the dinner given in honor of me at the London Tavern. 'Gentlemen,' said I, and there I stopped; the rest my feelings were under the necessity of supplying."

We can judge pretty well from this letter just how many of those lectures on Shakespeare Lamb was likely to hear; and all doubts are set at rest when we find Coleridge, the following winter, endeavoring to lure his reluctant friend to another course by the presentation of a complimentary ticket. Even this device fails of its wonted success. Lamb is eloquent in thanks, and lame in excuses. He has been in an "incessant hurry." He was unable to go on the evening he was expected because it was the night of Kenney's new comedy, "which has utterly failed,"—this is mentioned as soothing to Coleridge's wounded feelings. He has mistaken his dates, and supposed there would be no lectures in Christmas week. He is as eager to vindicate himself as Miss Edgeworth's Rosamond, and he is as sanguine as ever about the future. "I trust," he writes, "to hear many a course yet;" and