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[In this volume of "The Gem" seemingly appeared two articles by my father's close friend, Charles Lamb. The first was the poem "To an Infant Dying as soon as Born"-written to my father's first child. The second was a prose sketch entitled "The Widow," and signed "C. Lamb," but really written by my father as a joke. The following letter from Lamb, in my father's autograph book, refers to this literary forgery.

"DEAR LAMB,

"Enfield.

"You are an impudent varlet, but I will keep your secret. We dine at A's on Monday. Miss and her tragedy be d-d, so may not you and your rib. Health attend you.

"Yours,

"T. HOOD, Esq.”

"Miss Bridget Hood sends her love."

THE WIDOW.

A WIDOW hath always been a mark for mockery — a standing butt for wit to level at. Jest after jest hath been huddled upon her close cap, and stuck like burrs upon her weeds. Her sables are a perpetual "Black Joke." Satirists -prose and verse-have made merry with her bereavements. She is a stock character on the stage. Farce bottleth up her crocodile tears, or labelleth her empty lachrymatories. Comedy mocketh her precocious flirtations. Tragedy even girdeth at her frailty, and twitteth her with the "funeral baked meats coldly furnishing forth the marriage-tables.”

I confess, when I called the other day on my kinswoman G- then in the second week of her widowhood, and saw her sitting, her young boy by her side, in her recent sables, I felt unable to reconcile her estate with any risible associa

tions. The Lady with a skeleton moiety-in the old print, in Bowles's old shop window-seemed but a type of her condition. Her husband—a whole hemisphere in love's world— was deficient. One complete side, her left, was deathstricken. It was a matrimonial paralysis unprovocative of laughter. I could as soon have tittered at one of those melancholy objects that drag their poor dead-alive bodies about our streets.

It seems difficult to account for the popular prejudice against lone women. There is a majority, I trust, of such honestly decorous mourners as my kinswoman: yet are Widows like the Hebrew, a proverb and a byword amongst nations. From the first putting on of the sooty garments, they become a stock joke-chimney-sweep or blackamoor is not surer-by mere virtue of their nigritude.

Are the wanton amatory glances of a few pairs of graceless eyes, twinkling through their cunning waters, to reflect so evil a light on a whole community? Verily the sad benighted orbs of that noble relict, the Lady Rachel Russell, blinded through unserene drops for her dead Lord,-might atone for all such oglings!

Are the traditional freaks of a Dame of Ephesus, or a Wife of Bath, or a Queen of Denmark, to cast so broad a shadow over a whole sisterhood? There must be, methinks, some more general infirmity, common probably to all Eve-kind to justify so sweeping a stigma.

Does the satiric spirit, perhaps, institute splenetic comparisons between the lofty poetical pretensions of posthumous tenderness, and their fulfilment ? The sentiments of Love especially affect a high heroical pitch, of which the human performance can present at best but a burlesque parody. A Widow that hath lived only for her husband, should die with him. She is flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone; and it

is not seemly for a mere rib to be his survivor. The prose of her practice accords not with the poetry of her professions. She hath done with the world-but you meet her in Regentstreet. Earth hath now nothing left for her-but she swears and administers. She cannot survive him-and invests in the Long Annuities.

The romantic fancy resents, and the satiric spirit records, these discrepancies. By the conjugal theory itself there ought to be no Widows; and, accordingly, a class, that by our milder manners is merely ridiculed, on the ruder banks of the Ganges is literally roasted

C. LAMB.

[About this period was the reign of short poems, published separately with humorous illustrations, such as "Monsieur Tonson "-" Monsieur Nontongpaw." In accordance with the public fancy, my father published "The Epping Hunt" in this form, with illustrations from the inimitable pencil of George Cruikshank. The idea must have been under consideration long before it was carried out, for I find, in a letter from the artist to the publisher, dated Jan. 1827, the following passage:"With respect to the Easter Hunt,-will Mr. Hood make all the designs, so that I should have nothing to do but to draw them? Such ideas and sketches as 'The Mad Staggers' are worth half a dozen finished drawings." Attached to this note in my father's autograph book is a charming little sketch by Cruikshank of the head of Rounding (whose portrait formed the frontispiece), which my father laid especial store by, as being a marvellous likeness of an old friend, as well as a clever drawing.]

THE EPPING HUNT.

ADVERTISEMENT.

STRIDING in the Steps of Strutt-the historian of the old English Sports-the author of the following pages has endeavoured to record a yearly revel, already fast hastening to decay. The Easter Chase will soon be numbered with

the pastimes of past times: its dogs will have had their day, and its Deer will be Fallow. A few more seasons, and this City Common Hunt will become uncommon.

In proof of this melancholy decadence, the ensuing epistle is inserted. It was penned by an underling at the Wells, a person more accustomed to riding than writing.

"SIR,

"About the Hunt. In anser to your Innqueries, their as been a great falling off laterally, so much so this year that there was nobody allmost. We did a mear nothing provisionally, hardly a Bottle extra, wich is a proof in Pint. In short our Hunt may be sad to be in the last Stag of a decline.

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"On Monday they began to hunt."-Chevy Chase.

JOHN HUGGINS was as bold a man

As trade did ever know;

A warehouse good he had, that stood
Hard by the church of Bow.

There people bought Dutch cheeses round

And single Glos'ter flat;

And English butter in a lump,

And Irish-in a pat.

Six days a week beheld him stand,

His business next his heart,
At counter, with his apron tied
About his counter-part.

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With Monday's sun John Huggins rose,

And slapped his leather thigh, And sang the burden of the song, "This day a stag must die."

For all the live-long day before,

And all the night in bed,

Like Beckford, he had nourished "Thoughts On Hunting" in his head.

Of horn and morn, and hark and bark,

And echo's answering sounds,

All poets' wit hath every writ

In dog-rel verse of hounds.

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