It is now several days since I read the book you recommended to me, ‘Mrs. Leicester’s School’; and I feel as if I owed a debt in deferring to thank you for many hours of exquisite delight. Never have I read any thing in prose so many times over, within so short a space of time, as ‘The Father’s Wedding-day.’ Most people, I understand, prefer the first tale--in truth a very admirable one--but others could have written it. Show me the man or woman, modern or ancient, who could have written this one sentence: “When I was dressed in my new frock, I wished poor mamma was alive to see how fine I was on papa’s wedding-day; and I ran to my favorite station at her bedroom door.” How natural, in a little girl, is this incongruity, this impossibility!... A fresh source of the pathetic bursts out before us, and not a bitter one.... The story is admirable throughout--incomparable, inimitable. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR: _Letter to H. C. Robinson_, April, 1831, in the latter’s ‘Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence.’ Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1871. * * * * * [Sidenote: ‘Mrs. Leicester’s School.’] The first edition sold out immediately, and four more were called for in the course of five years. It has continued in fair demand ever since, though there have not been any thing like so many recent reprints as of the ‘Tales from Shakespeare.’ It is one of those children’s books, which to re-open, in after-life is like revisiting some sunny old garden, some favorite haunt of childhood, where every nook and cranny seems familiar and calls up a thousand pleasant memories. ANNE GILCHRIST: ‘Mary Lamb.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: ‘Poetry for Children.’] I shall have to send you, in a week or two, two volumes of juvenile poetry done by Mary and me within the last six months.... Our little poems are but humble, they have no name. You must read them, remembering they were task-work; and perhaps you will admire the number of subjects, all of children, picked out by an old bachelor and an old maid. Many parents would not have found so many. CHARLES LAMB: _Letter to Coleridge_, June, 1809, in ‘Final Memorials,’ by T. N. Talfourd. * * * * * ‘Poetry for Children, Entirely Original, by the Author of Mrs. Leicester’s School,’ as the title-page runs, was published in the summer of 1809, and the whole of the first edition sold off rapidly; but instead of being reprinted entire, selections from it only--twenty-six out of the eighty-four pieces--were incorporated, by a school-master of the name of Mylius, in two books called ‘The First Book of Poetry’ and ‘The Poetical Class Book,’ issued from the same Juvenile Library [Godwin’s] in 1810. These went through many editions, but ultimately dropped quite out of sight, as the original work had already done. Writing to Bernard Barton, in 1827, Lamb says: