Chapter 213

CHARLES LAMB TO MR. SARGUS [Dated at end: Feb. 23, 1815.]

Dr Sargus--This is to give you notice that I have parted with the Cottage to Mr. Grig Jun'r. to whom you will pay rent from Michaelmas last. The rent that was due at Michaelmas I do not wish you to pay me. I forgive it you as you may have been at some expences in repairs.

Yours CH. LAMB.

Inner Temple Lane, London, 23 Feb., 1815.

[In 1812 Lamb inherited, through his godfather, Francis Fielde, who is mentioned in the _Elia_ essay "My First Play," a property called Button Snap, near Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire, consisting of a small cottage and about an acre of ground. In 1815 he sold it for £50, and the foregoing letter is an intimation of the transaction to his tenant. The purchaser, however, was not a Mr. Grig, but a Mr. Greg (see notes to "My First Play" in Vol. II. of this edition). In my large edition I give a picture of the cottage.

I append here an undated letter to Joseph Hume which belongs to a time posterior to the sale of the cottage. It refers to Tuthill's candidature for the post of physician to St. Luke's Hospital.

The letter is printed in Mr. Kegan Paul's _William Godwin: His Friends and Acquaintances_, as though it were written to Godwin, and all Lamb's editors follow in assuming the Philosopher to be the recipient, but internal evidence practically proves that Hume was addressed; for there is the reference to Mrs. Hume and her daughters, and Godwin lived not in Kensington but in Skinner Street.]