L.E.L. was, of course, the unhappy Letitia Landon, a famous contributor to the published albums.
"My tragi comedy." Still "The Wife's Trial." Kemble was Charles Kemble, manager of Covent Garden Theatre. The play was never acted.
"Your refusal to lend your poetical sanction." This is not clear, but I think the meaning to be deducible. The Icon was Pulham's etching of Lamb. Evans was William Evans, who had grangerised Byron's _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. I take it that he was now making another collection of portraits of poets and was asking other poets, their friends, to write verses upon them. In this way he had applied through Lamb to Barton for verses on Pulham's Elia, and had been refused. This is, of course, only conjecture.
"Your Drummonds"--your bankers. Barton's bankers were the Alexanders, a Quaker firm.
"James Naylor." Barton had paraphrased Nayler's "Testimony."
Following this letter, under the date August 29, 1827, should come a letter from Lamb to Robert Jameson (husband of Mrs. Jameson) asking him to interest himself in Miss Isola's career. "Our friend Coleridge will bear witness to the very excellent manner in which she read to him some of the most difficult passages in the Paradise Lost."]
Dear Patmore--Excuse my anxiety--but how is Dash? (I should have asked if Mrs. Patmore kept her rules, and was improving--but Dash came uppermost. The order of our thoughts should be the order of our writing.) Goes he muzzled, or _aperto ore_? Are his intellects sound, or does he wander a little in _his_ conversation? You cannot be too careful to watch the first symptoms of incoherence. The first illogical snarl he makes, to St. Luke's with him! All the dogs here are going mad, if you believe the overseers; but I protest they seem to me very rational and collected. But nothing is so deceitful as mad people to those who are not used to them. Try him with hot water. If he won't lick it up, it is a sign he does not like it. Does his tail wag horizontally or perpendicularly? That has decided the fate of many dogs in Enfield. Is his general deportment cheerful? I mean when he is pleased--for otherwise there is no judging. You can't be too careful. Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have them shot, and keep _him_ for curiosity, to see if it was the hydrophobia. They say all our army in India had it at one time--but that was in _Hyder_-Ally's time. Do you get paunch for him? Take care the sheep was sane. You might pull out his teeth (if he would let you), and then you need not mind if he were as mad as a Bedlamite. It would be rather fun to see his odd ways. It might amuse Mrs. Patmore and the children. They'd have more sense than he! He'd be like a Fool kept in the family, to keep the household in good humour with their own understanding. You might teach him the mad dance set to the mad howl. _Madge Owl-et_ would be nothing to him. "My, how he capers!" [_In the margin is written_:] One of the children speaks this.