Chapter 293

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

[No date. Jan., 1833.]

I have a proof from Dilke. _That_ serves for next Saturday. What Forster had, will serve a second. I sent you a _third_ concluding article for _him_ and _us_ (a capital hit, I think, about Cervantes) of which I leave you to judge whether we shall not want it to print _before_ a third or even second week. In that case beg D. to clap them in all at once; and keep the Atheneums to print from. What I send is the concluding Article of the painters.

Soften down the Title in the Book to

"Defect of the Imaginative Faculty in Artists."

Consult Dilke.

[Lamb's _Elia_ essay "Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Production of Modern Art," intended originally for _The Englishman's Magazine_, was partly printed by Forster in _The Reflector_ and finally printed in full in _The Athenaeum_ in January and February, 1833. The reference to Don Quixote is at the end. Moxon was already printing the _Last Essays of Elia_.

"Consult Dilke" was a favourite phrase with Lamb and Hood and, long before, with Keats.]