Page:Mary Lamb (Gilchrist 1883).djvu/124

108 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. 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.

"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?"

Mary's interest in her friend and her friend's affairs is so hearty one cannot choose but share it and would gladly see what "the best letter-writer in the world" had to tell of Coleridge and Stoddart and the long arguments and little jealousies; and whether 'William' had continued to dangle on, spite of distance and discouragement; and even to learn that the old lady received her pension and her wig in safety. But curiosity must remain unsatisfied for none of Miss Stoddart's letters have been preserved.

"The picture of Charles" was, we may feel pretty sure, one which William Hazlitt painted this year of Lamb 'in the costume of a Venetian senator.' It is, on all accounts, a peculiarly interesting portrait. Lamb was just thirty; and it gives, on the whole, a striking impression of the nobility arid beauty of form and feature which characterised his head and partly realises Proctor's description—"a countenance so full of sensibility that it came upon you like a new thought which you could not help dwelling upon afterwards"; though the subtle lines which gave that wondrous sweetness of expression to the mouth are not fully