[Patmore was the author of _The Mirror of the Months_, 1826.]
Dear Walter, The sight of your old name again was like a resurrection. It had passed away into the dimness of a dead friend. We shall be most joyful to see you here next week,--if I understand you right--for your note dated the 10th arrived only yesterday, Friday the _16th_. Suppose I name _Thursday_ next. If that don't suit, write to say so. A morning coach comes from the Bell or Bell & Crown by Leather Lane Holborn, and sets you down at our house on the Chase Side, next door to Mr. Westwood's, whom all the coachmen know.
I have four more notes to write, so dispatch this with again assuring you how happy we shall be to see you, & to discuss Defoe & old matters.
[The last letter to Wilson was on Feb. 24, 1823. Lamb wrote to Hone a few days later: "Valter Vilson dines with us to-morrow. Vell! How I should like to see Hone!"]
My dear Talfourd, we propose being with you on Wednesday not unearly, Mary to take a bed with you, and I with Crabbe, if, as I understand, he be of the party.
[Lamb's future biographer was then living at 26 Henrietta Street, Brunswick Square. He had married in 1822. Crabb Robinson's _Diary_ for May 21 tells us that Talfourd's party consisted of the Lambs, Wordsworth, Miss Anne Rutt, three barristers and himself. Lamb was in excellent spirits. He slept at Robinson's that night.]
Dear Wordsworth, we had meant to have tried to see Mrs. Wordsworth and Dora next Wednesday, but we are intercepted by a violent toothache which Mary has got by getting up next morning after parting with you, to be with my going off at 1/2 past 8 Holborn. We are poor travellers, and moreover we have company (damn 'em) good people, Mr. Hone and an old crony not seen for 20 years, coming here on Tuesday, one stays night with us, and Mary doubts my power to get up time enough, and comfort enough, to be so far as you are. Will you name a day in the same or coming week that we can come to you in the morning, for it would plague us not to see the other two of you, whom we cannot individualize from you, before you go. It is bad enough not to see your Sister Dorothy.
[Robinson dates this letter 1810, but this is clearly wrong. It was obviously written after Lamb's liberation from the India House. If, as I suppose, the old crony is Walter Wilson, we get the date from Lamb's letters to him and to Hone, mentioned above.