Of serious literary work, during this period, Lamb did but little; his main pen product being his letters to his many absent friends, which give us such valuable and characteristic glimpses into the man’s lovable nature. He wrote a series of short essays, with the title “Popular Fallacies,” for the _New Monthly Magazine_ in 1828; and a little prose miscellany--chat and souvenirs of the Royal Academy--called “Peter’s Net,” for the _Englishman’s Magazine_ in 1831. The year before, Moxon had published a small volume of small poems by Lamb--“Album Verses”--concerning which a curious secret has only lately come to light. The critics found little to praise in these verses--and with good reason--and a review was sent to the _Englishman’s Magazine_, with a line to Moxon from Lamb: “I have ingeniously contrived to review myself. Tell me if this will do.” He did not praise or puff his own work, let me hasten to say; but his paper is rather a protest against the errors and carelessness of those same “indolent reviewers.” Still, it is a clear case of surreptitious self-reviewing, and of it we may say, in the words of the coy Quakeress--not Lamb’s Islington Quakeress--when she reluctantly consented to let her ardent wooer enforce his threat to kiss her--“it must not be made a practice of.” In 1833 appeared the “Last Essays of Elia,” collected in one volume, from the _London_, the _Englishman’s_, and the _New Monthly Magazines_, and the _Athenæum_. This work closed his literary life, not long before the closing of his bodily life. For the scene darkens swiftly now. “Mary [Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF A RECEIPT FOR A LEGACY, SIGNED BY CHARLES LAMB AS GUARDIAN FOR HIS SISTER MARY. [By permission of Charles B. Foote, Esq., the owner of the original.]] is ill again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The last was three months, followed by two of depression most dreadful. I look back upon her earlier attacks with longing. Nice little durations of six weeks or so, followed by complete restoration, shocking as they were to me, then. In short, half her life is dead to me, and the other half is made anxious with fears and lookings-forward to the next shock.” This was in May, 1833, when he decided to remove to Edmonton: “With such prospects it seemed to me necessary that she should no longer live with me, and be fluttered with continual removals; so I am come to live with her at a Mr. Walden’s and his wife, who take in patients, and have arranged to lodge and board us only.”