the _Cat and Gridiron_?

"[MOTTO]

"This Beauty, in the blossom of my Youth,
When my first fire knew no adulterate incense,
Nor I no way to flatter but my fondness,
In the best language my true tongue could tell me,
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lend me,
I sued and served. Long did I love this Lady.

"Massinger."

"THE DEDICATION
_THE FEW FOLLOWING POEMS_,
CREATURES OF THE FANCY AND THE FEELING
IN LIFE'S MORE _VACANT_ HOURS,
PRODUCED, FOR THE MOST PART, BY
LOVE IN IDLENESS;
ARE,
WITH ALL A BROTHER'S FONDNESS,
INSCRIBED TO
MARY ANN LAMB,
THE AUTHOR'S BEST FRIEND AND SISTER"

The dedication was printed as Lamb wished, in the form I have followed
above, and the book appeared.

Page 8. _When last I roved these winding wood-walks green,_

This was sent to Coleridge on June 1, 1796, in a letter containing also
the sonnets, "The Lord of Life," page 16; "A timid grace," page 8; and
"We were two pretty babes," page 9. It was written, said Lamb, "on
revisiting a spot, where the scene was laid of my 1st sonnet"--"Was it
some sweet device," page 4. Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and
1818. Page 8. _A timid grace sits trembling in her eye._

This, the last of the four love sonnets (see note on page 310), seems to
be a survival of a discarded effort, for Lamb tells Coleridge, in the
letter referred to in the preceding note, that it "retains a few lines
from a sonnet of mine, which you once remarked had no 'body of thought'
in it." Lamb printed this sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818.

Page 9. _If from my lips some angry accents fell,_

Lamb sent this sonnet, which is addressed to his sister, to Coleridge in
May, 1796. "The Sonnet I send you has small merit as poetry, but you
will be curious to read it when I tell you it was written in my
prison-house [an asylum] in one of my lucid Intervals." It is dated 1795
in Coleridge's _Poems_. Lamb printed the sonnet twice--in 1797 and 1818.

Page 9. _We were two pretty babes, the youngest she._

First printed in the _Monthly Magazine_, July, 1796. "The next and last
[wrote Lamb in the letter to Coleridge referred to in the notes on page
310] I value most of all. 'Twas composed close upon the heels of the
last ['A timid grace,' page 8], in that very wood I had in mind when I
wrote 'Methinks how dainty sweet' [page 5]." It is da