Little inmate, full of mirth, Chirping on my kitchen hearth, Wheresoe'er be thine abode, Always harbinger of good, Pay me for thy warm retreat, With a song more soft and sweet; In return thou shalt receive Such a strain as I can give. * * * * * Though in voice and shape they be Formed as if akin to thee, Thou surpassest, happier far, Happiest grasshoppers that are; Theirs is but a summer song, Thine endures the winter long, Unimpaired, and shrill, and clear, Melody throughout the year. Neither night nor dawn of day Puts a period to thy play: Sing, then--and extend thy span Far beyond the date of man; Wretched man, whose years are spent In repining discontent, Lives not, agèd though he be, Half a span, compared with thee. There is in the blind beggar something of the quality of Lamb's own life, with its inherent loneliness imposed by an ever-present grief in the midst of London's noisy streets; and in the verses to the cricket it is scarcely fanciful to find an image of Cowper's "domestic life in rural leisure passed." Lamb was twenty-five when Cowper died, in the year 1800. One is tempted to continue in the language of fable and ask what would have happened had the city mouse allured the country mouse to visit his chambers in Holborn or Southampton buildings. To be sure there was no luxury of purple robe and mighty feast in that abode; but I think the revelry and the wit, and that hound of intemperance which always pursued poor Lamb, would have frightened his guest back to his hiding-place in the wilderness: ... me silva cavusque Tutus ab insidiis tenui solabitur ervo!