Mrs. K., after expressing her love for her young children, added, tenderly, "And how do _you_ like babies, Mr. Lamb?" His answer, immediate, almost precipitate, was "Boi-boi-boiled, ma'am." Hood, tempting Lamb to dine with him, said, "We have a hare." "And many friends?" inquired Lamb. It being suggested that he would not sit down to a meal with the Italian witnesses at the Queen's trial, Lamb rejected the imputation, asserting that he would sit with anything except a hen or a tailor. Of a man too prodigal of lampoons and verbal jokes, Lamb said, threateningly, "I'll Lamb-pun him." On two Prussians of the same name being accused of the same crime, it was remarked as curious that they were not in any way related to each other. "A mistake," said he; "they are cozens german." An old lady, fond of her dissenting minister, wearied Lamb by the length of her praises. "I speak, because I _know_ him well," said she. "Well, I don't;" replied Lamb; "I don't; but d--n him, at a 'venture.'" The Scotch, whom he did not like, ought, he said, to have double punishment; and to have fire without brimstone. Southey, in 1799, showed him a dull poem on a rose. Lamb's criticism was, "Your rose is insipid: it has neither thorns nor sweetness." A person sending an unnecessarily large sum with a lawyer's brief, Lamb said "it was 'a fee simple.'" Mr. H. C. Robinson, just called to the bar, tells him, exultingly, that he is retained in a cause in the King's Bench. "Ah" (said Lamb), "the great first cause, least understood." Of a pun, Lamb says it is a "noble thing _per se_. It is entire. It fills the mind; it is as perfect as a sonnet; better. It limps ashamed, in the train and retinue of humor." [2] Lamb's puns, as far as I recollect, were not frequent; and, except in the case of a pun, it is difficult to divest a good saying of the facts surrounding it without impoverishing the saying itself. Lamb's humor is generally imbedded in the surrounding sense, and cannot often be disentangled without injury. I have said that the proprietorship of the "London Magazine," in the year 1821, became vested in Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, under whom it became a social centre for the meeting of many literary men. The publication, however, seems to have interfered with the ordinary calling of the booksellers; and the sale was not therefore (I suppose) sufficiently important to remunerate them for the disturbance of their general trade. At all events, it was sold to Mr. Henry Southern, the editor of "The Retrospective Review," at the expiration of 1825, after having been in existence during five entire years. In Mr. Southern's hands, under a different system of management, it speedily ceased.