. "I love my
own feelings: they are dear to memory," he says in a letter in 1796,
"though they now and then wake a sigh or a tear. 'Thinking on divers
things foredone,' I charge you, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Later,
when Coleridge's second edition was in preparation, Lamb wrote again
(January 10, 1797): "I need not repeat my wishes to have my little
sonnets printed _verbatim_ my last way. In particular, I fear lest you
should prefer printing my first sonnet [this one] as you have done more
than once, 'Did the wand of Merlin wave?' It looks so like _Mr_. Merlin,
the ingenious successor of the immortal Merlin, now living in good
health and spirits, and flourishing in magical reputation in Oxford
Street." The phrase "more than once" in the foregoing passage needs
explanation. It refers to the little pamphlet of sonnets, entitled
_Sonnets from Various Authors_, which Coleridge issued privately in
1796, and of which only one copy is now known to exist--that preserved
in the Dyce and Forster collection at South Kensington. The little
pamphlet contains twenty-eight sonnets in all, of which three are by
Bowles, four by Southey, four by Charles Lloyd, four by Coleridge, four
by Lamb, and others by various writers: all of which were chosen for
their suitability to be bound up with the sonnets of Bowles. Lamb's
sonnets were: "We were two pretty babes" (see page 9), "Was it some
sweet device" (printed with Coleridge's alterations), "When last I
roved" (see page 8), and "O! I could laugh" (see page 5).

The present sonnet belongs to the series of four love sonnets which is
completed by the one that follows, "Methinks, how dainty sweet it were,"
and those on page 8 beginning, "When last I roved" and "A timid grace."
Anna is believed to have been Ann Simmons, who lived at Blenheims, a
group of cottages near Blakesware, the house where Mrs. Field, Lamb's
grandmother, was housekeeper. Mrs. Field died in 1792, after which time
Lamb's long visits to that part of the country probably ceased. He was
then seventeen. Nothing is known of Lamb's attachment beyond these
sonnets, the fact that when he lost his reason for a short time in
1795-1796 he attributed the cause to some person unmentioned who is
conjectured to have been Anna, and the occasional references in the Ella
essays to "Alice W----" and to his old passion for her (see "Dream
Children" in particular, in Vol. II). The death of Mrs. Lamb in
September, 1796, and the duty of cari