You would like to see us as we often sit writing on one table (but not on one cushion sitting), like _Hermia_ and _Helena_ in the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’; or rather, like an old literary Darby and Joan, I, taking snuff, and he, groaning all the while and saying he can make nothing of it, which he always says till he has finished, and then he finds out that he has made something of it. MARY LAMB: _Letter to Sarah Stoddart_, June 2nd, 1806, in ‘Mary and Charles Lamb: Poems, Letters and Remains,’ edited by W. Carew Hazlitt. New York: Scribner, Welford & Armstrong, 1874. * * * * * Mary is just stuck fast in ‘All’s Well that Ends Well.’ She complains of having to set forth so many female characters in boys’ clothes. She begins to think Shakespeare must have wanted----Imagination. I, to encourage her, for she often faints in the prosecution of her great work, flatter her with telling her how well such a play and such a play is done. But she is stuck fast. CHARLES LAMB: _Letter to Wordsworth_, in ‘Final Memorials,’ by T. N. Talfourd. * * * * * I am in good spirits just at this present time, for Charles has been reading over the _tale_ I told you plagued me so much, and he thinks it one of the very best: it is ‘All’s Well that Ends Well.’ You must not mind the many wretchedly dull letters I have sent you: for, indeed, I cannot help it, my mind is so _dry_ always after poring over my work all day. But it will soon be over. I am cooking a shoulder of lamb (Hazlitt dines with us); it will be ready at two o’clock, if you can pop in and eat a bit with us. MARY LAMB: _Letter to Sarah Stoddart_, July, 1806, in ‘Mary and Charles Lamb,’ by W. Carew Hazlitt. * * * * * [Sidenote: ‘Tales from Shakespeare.’] It is not generally known, perhaps, that previously to their circulation in a collective shape, Godwin, the publisher and proprietor of the copyright, offered them to his juvenile patrons and patronesses at No. 41 Skinner Street, in six-penny books, with the plates (by Blake) “beautifully colored.” W. CAREW HAZLITT: ‘Mary and Charles Lamb.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Praise from Landor.]