And those 3 smiling seasons of the year Into a Russian winter. _Old Play_.
I am sitting opposite a person who is making strange distortions with the gout, which is not unpleasant--to me at least. What is the reason we do not sympathise with pain, short of some terrible Surgical operation? Hazlitt, who boldly says all he feels, avows that not only he does not pity sick people, but he hates them. I obscurely recognise his meaning. Pain is probably too selfish a consideration, too simply a consideration of self-attention. We pity poverty, loss of friends etc. more complex things, in which the Sufferers feelings are associated with others. This is a rough thought suggested by the presence of gout; I want head to extricate it and plane it. What is all this to your Letter? I felt it to be a good one, but my turn, when I write at all, is perversely to travel out of the record, so that my letters are any thing but answers. So you still want a motto? You must not take my ironical one, because your book, I take it, is too serious for it. Bickerstaff might have used it for _his_ lucubrations. What do you think of (for a Title)
There is Religio-Medici and Laici.--But perhaps the volume is not quite Quakerish enough or exclusively for it--but your own VIGILS is perhaps the Best. While I have space, let me congratulate with you the return of Spring--what a Summery Spring too! all those qualms about the dog and cray-fish melt before it. I am going to be happy and _vain_ again.
["Southey's Book"--_The Book of the Church_.
"Would Wilberforce give us our Tuesdays?"--William Wilberforce, the abolitionist and the principal "Puritan" of that day.]
Dear Mrs. A.--Mary begs me to say how much she regrets we can not join you to Reigate. Our reasons are --1st I have but one holyday namely Good Friday, and it is not pleasant to solicit for another, but that might have been got over. 2dly Manning is with us, soon to go away and we should not be easy in leaving him. 3dly Our school girl Emma comes to us for a few days on Thursday. 4thly and lastly, Wordsworth is returning home in about a week, and out of respect to them we should not like to absent ourselves just now. In summer I shall have a month, and if it shall suit, should like to go for a few days of it out with you both _any where_. In the mean time, with many acknowledgments etc. etc., I remain yours (both) truly, C. LAMB.