Chapter 15

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN TAYLOR

July 21, 1821.

D'r Sir,--The _Lond. Mag._ is chiefly pleasant to me, because some of my friends write in it. I hope Hazlitt intends to go on with it, we cannot spare Table Talk. For myself I feel almost exhausted, but I will try my hand a little longer, and shall not at all events be written out of it by newspaper paragraphs. Your proofs do not seem to want my helping hand, they are quite correct always. For God's sake change _Sisera_ to _Jael_. This last paper will be a choke-pear I fear to some people, but as you do not object to it, I can be under little apprehension of your exerting your Censorship too rigidly.

Thanking you for your extract from M'r. E.'s letter,

I remain, D'r Sir,

Your obliged,

C. LAMB.

[Hazlitt continued his Table Talk in the _London Magazine_ until December, 1821.

Lamb seems to have been treated foolishly by some newspaper critic; but I have not traced the paragraphs in question.

The proof was that of the _Elia_ essay "Imperfect Sympathies," which was printed (with a fuller title) in the number for August, 1821. The reference to Jael is in the passage on Braham and the Jewish character.

I do not identify Mr. E. Possibly Elton. See next letter.

Here should come a further letter to Taylor, dated July 30, 1821, in which Lamb refers to some verses addressed to him by "Olen" (Charles Abraham Elton: see note to next letter) in the _London Magazine_ for August, remonstrating with him for the pessimism of the _Elia_ essay "New Year's Eve" (see Vol. II. of this edition).

Lamb also remarks that he borrowed the name Elia (pronounced Ellia) from an old South-Sea House clerk who is now dead.

Elia has recently been identified by Mr. R.W. Goulding, the librarian at Welbeck Abbey, as F. Augustus Elia, author of a French tract entitled _Considération sur l'état actuel de la France au mois de Juin 1815. Par une anglais_. It is privately reprinted in _Letters from the originals at Welbeck Abbey_, 1909.]