The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, vol 5 | Page 8

was written in my prison-house in one of
my lucid Intervals.
TO MY SISTER
If from my lips some angry accents fell, Peevish complaint, or harsh
reproof unkind, 'Twas but the error of a sickly mind, And troubled
thoughts, clouding the purer well, And waters clear, of Reason; and for
me, Let this my verse the poor atonement be, My verse, which thou to
praise wast ever inclined Too highly, and with a partial eye to see No
blemish: thou to me didst ever shew Fondest affection, and woud'st
oftimes lend An ear to the desponding love sick lay, Weeping my
sorrows with me, who repay But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,
Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.
With these lines, and with that sister's kindest remembrances to C----, I
conclude--
Yours sincerely
LAMB.
Your Conciones ad populum are the most eloquent politics that ever
came in my way.
Write, when convenient--not as a task, for there is nothing in this letter
to answer.
You may inclose under cover to me at the India house what letters you
please, for they come post free.
We cannot send our remembrances to Mrs. C---- not having seen her,
but believe me our best good wishes attend you both.
My civic and poetic compts to Southey if at Bristol.--Why, he is a very
Leviathan of Bards--the small minnow I--
[This is the earliest letter of Lamb's that has come down to us. On
February 10, 1796, he was just twenty-one years old, and was now
living at 7 Little Queen Street (since demolished) with his father,
mother, Aunt Sarah Lamb (known as Aunt Hetty), Mary Lamb and,
possibly, John Lamb. John Lamb, senior, was doing nothing and had, I
think, already begun to break up: his old master, Samuel Salt, had died
in February, 1792. John Lamb, the son (born June 5, 1763), had a
clerkship at the South-Sea House; Charles Lamb had begun his long
period of service in the India House; and Mary Lamb (born December
3, 1764) was occupied as a mantua-maker.

At this time Coleridge was twenty-three; he would be twenty-four on
October 21. His military experiences over, he had married Sara Fricker
on October 4, 1795 (a month before Southey married her sister Edith),
and was living at Bristol, on Redcliffe Hill. The first number of The
Watchman was dated on March 1, 1796; on May 13, 1796, it came to
an end. On April 16, 1796, Cottle had issued Coleridge's Poems on
Various Subjects, containing also four "effusions" by Charles Lamb
(Nos. VII., XI., XII. and XIII.), and the "Religious Musings." Southey,
on bad terms with Coleridge, partly on account of Southey's
abandonment of Pantisocracy, was in Lisbon. His Joan of Arc had just
been published by Cottle in quarto at a guinea. Previously he had
collaborated in The Fall of Robespierre, 1794, with Coleridge and
Robert Lovell. Each, one evening, had set forth to write an act by the
next. Southey and Lovell did so, but Coleridge brought only a part of
his. Lovell's being useless, Southey rewrote his act, Coleridge finished
his at leisure, and the result was published. Robert Lovell (1770?-1796)
had also been associated with Coleridge and Southey in Pantisocracy
and was their brother-in-law, having married Mary Fricker, another of
the sisters. When, in 1795, Southey and Lovell had published a joint
volume of Poems, Southey took the pseudonym of Bion and Lovell of
Moschus.
May was probably the landlord of the Salutation and Cat. The London
Directory for 1808 has "William May, Salutation Coffee House, 17
Newgate Street." We must suppose that when Coleridge quitted the
Salutation and Cat in January, 1795, he was unable to pay his bill, and
therefore had to leave his luggage behind. Cottle's story of Coleridge
being offered free lodging by a London inn-keeper, if he would only
talk and talk, must then either be a pretty invention or apply to another
landlord, possibly the host of the Angel in Butcher Hall Street.
Allen was Robert Allen, a schoolfellow of Lamb and Coleridge, and
Coleridge's first friend. He was born on October 18, 1772. Both Lamb
and Leigh Hunt tell good stories of him at Christ's Hospital, Lamb in
Elia and Hunt in his Autobiography. From Christ's Hospital he went to
University College, Oxford, and it was he who introduced Coleridge
and Hucks to Southey in 1794. Probably, says Mr. E. H. Coleridge, it
was he who brought Coleridge and John Stoddart (afterwards Sir John,
and Hazlitt's brother-in-law) together. On leaving Oxford he seems to

have gone to Westminster to learn surgery, and in 1797 he was
appointed Deputy-Surgeon to the 2nd Royals, then in Portugal. He
married a widow with children; at some time later took to journalism,
as Lamb's reference in the