OLERIDGE'S _POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS_, 1796.

This book was published by Cottle, of Bristol, in 1796. Lamb contributed
four poems, which were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface:
"The Effusions signed C.L. were written by Mr. CHARLES LAMB, of the
India House--independently of the signature their superior merit would
have sufficiently distinguished them." Lamb reprinted the first only
once, in 1797, in the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, the
remaining three again in his _Works_ in 1818. I have followed in the
body of this volume the text of these later appearances, the original
form of the sonnets being relegated to the notes.

Page 4. _As when a child on some long winter's night._

Some mystery attaches to the authorship of this sonnet. On December 1,
1794, Coleridge wrote to the editor of the _Morning Chronicle_ saying
that he proposed to send a series of sonnets ("as it is the fashion to
call them") addressed to eminent contemporaries; and he enclosed one to
Mr. Erskine. The editor, with almost Chinese politeness, inserted
beneath the sonnet this note: "Our elegant Correspondent will highly
gratify every reader of taste by the continuance of his exquisitely
beautiful productions." The series continued with Burke, Priestley,
Lafayette, Kosciusko, Chatham, Bowles, and, on December 29, 1794, Mrs.
Siddons--the sonnet here printed--all signed S.T.C.

But the next appearance of the sonnet was as an effusion by Lamb in
Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796, signed C.L.; and its next
in the _Poems_, 1797, among Lamb's contributions. In 1803, however, we
find it in Coleridge's _Poems_, third edition, with no reference to Lamb
whatever. This probably means that Lamb and Coleridge had written it
together, that Coleridge's original share had been the greater, and that
Lamb and he had come to an arrangement by which Coleridge was to be
considered the sole author; for Lamb did not reprint it in 1818 with his
other early verse. Writing in 1796 to Coleridge concerning his treatment
of other of Lamb's sonnets, Lamb says: "That to Mrs. Siddons, now, you
were welcome to improve, if it had been worth it; but I say unto you
again, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Such a distinction drawn between
the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons and the others supports the belief that Lamb
had not for it a deeply parental feeling.

This was not the only occasion on which Lamb and Coleridge wrote a
sonnet in partnership. Writing to S