In the year 1827 Lamb moved into a small house at Enfield, a "gamboge- colored house," he calls it, where I and other friends went to dine with him; but it was too far from London, except for rare visits.--It was rather before that time that a very clever caricature of him had been designed and engraved ("scratched on copper," as the artist termed it) by Mr. Brook Pulham. It is still extant; and although somewhat ludicrous and hyperbolical in the countenance and outline, it certainly renders a likeness of Charles Lamb. The nose is monstrous, and the limbs are dwarfed and attenuated. Lamb himself, in a letter to Bernard Barton (10th August, 1827), adverts to it in these terms: "'Tis a little sixpenny thing--too like by half--in which the draughtsman has done his best to avoid flattery." Charles's hatred for annuals and albums was continually breaking out: "I die of albophobia." "I detest to appear in an annual," he writes; "I hate the paper, the type, the gloss, the dandy plates." "Coleridge is too deep," again he says, "among the prophets, the gentleman annuals." "If I take the wings of the morning, and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, there will albums be." To Southey he writes about this time, "I have gone lately into the acrostic line. I find genius declines with me; but I get clever." The reader readily appreciates the distinction which the humorist thus cleverly (more than cleverly) makes. In proof of his subdued quality, however, under the acrostical tyranny, I quote two little unpublished specimens addressed to the Misses Locke, whom he had never seen. To M. L. [Mary Locke.] Must I write with pen unwilling, And describe those graces killing, Rightly, which I never saw? Yes--it is the album's law. Let me then invention strain, On your excelling grace to feign. Cold is fiction. I believe it Kindly as I did receive it; Even as I. F.'s tongue did weave it. To S. L. [Sarah Locke.] Shall I praise a face unseen, And extol a fancied mien, Rave on visionary charm, And from shadows take alarm? Hatred hates without a cause, Love may love without applause, Or, without a reason given, Charmed be with unknown heaven. Keep the secret, though unmocked, Ever in your bosom Locked. After the transfer to Mr. Southern of the "London Magazine," Lamb was prevailed upon to allow some short papers to be published in the "New Monthly Magazine." They were entitled "Popular Fallacies," and were subsequently published conjointly with the "Elia Essays." He also sent brief contributions to the "Athenaeum" and the "Englishman," and wrote some election squibs for Serjeant Wilde, during his then contest for "Newark." But his animal spirits were not so elastic as formerly, when his time was divided between official work and companionable leisure; the latter acting as a wholesome relief to his mind when wearied by labor.