Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/102

appears to have derived a keen and kindly pleasure from the more reasonable and modest presents of his friends. Perhaps, like Steele, he looked upon it as a point of morality to be obliged to those who endeavored to oblige him. Perhaps it was easy for one so lovable to detect the honest affection which inspired these varied gifts. It is certain we find him returning genial thanks, now to Hazlitt for a pig, now to Wordsworth for a "great armful" of poetry, and now to Thomas Allsop for some Stilton cheese,—"the delicatest, rainbow-hued, melting piece I ever flavored." He seems equally gratified with an engraving of Pope sent by Mr. Procter, and with another pig,—"a dear pigmy," he calls it,—the gift of Mrs. Bruton. Nor is it only in these letters of acknowledgment—wherein courtesy dispenses occasionally with the companionship of truth—that Lamb shows himself a generous recipient of his friends' good will. He writes to Wordsworth, who has sent him nothing, and expresses his frank delight in some fruit which has been left early that morning at his door:—