em
twice--in 1797 and 1818.

* * * * *

Page 16. POEMS WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1795-1798, AND NOT REPRINTED BY LAMB.

Page 16. _Sonnet: The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed_.

The _Monthly Magazine_, December, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb.

Lamb sent the first draft of this sonnet to Coleridge in 1796, saying
that it was composed "during a walk down into Hertfordshire early in
last Summer." "The last line," he adds, "is a copy of Bowles's 'to the
green hamlet in the peaceful plain.' Your ears are not so very
fastidious--many people would not like words so prosaic and familiar in
a sonnet as Islington and Hertfordshire." We must take Lamb's word for
it; but the late W.J. Craig found for the last line a nearer parallel
than Bowles'. In William Vallans' "Tale of the Two Swannes" (1590),
which is quoted in Leland's Itinerary, Hearne's edition, is the phrase:
"The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire." Lamb quotes his own
line in the _Elia_ essay "My Relations."

This sonnet is perhaps the only occasion on which Lamb, even in play,
wrote anything against his beloved city.

It may be noted here that this was Lamb's last contribution to the
_Monthly Magazine_, which had printed in the preceding number, November,
1797, Coleridge's satirical sonnets, signed Nehemiah Higginbottom, in
which Lamb and Lloyd were ridiculed, and which had perhaps some bearing
on the coolness that for a while was to subsist between Coleridge and
Lamb (see _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_, 1898, pages 44-47).

Page 16. _To the Poet Cowper_.

The _Monthly Magazine_, December, 1796. Signed C. Lamb.

Lamb wrote these lines certainly as early as July, 1796, for he sends
them to Coleridge on the 6th of that month, adding:--

"I fear you will not accord entirely with my sentiments of Cowper, as
_exprest_ above, (perhaps scarcely just), but the poor Gentleman has
just recovered from his Lunacies, and that begets pity, and pity love,
and love admiration, and then it goes hard with People but they lie!"

Lamb admired Cowper greatly in those days--particularly his "Crazy Kate"
("Task," Book I., 534-556). "I have been reading 'The Task' with fresh
delight," he says on December 5, 1796. "I am glad you love Cowper. I
could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that
man my friend, who should be offended with the 'divine chit-chat of
Cowper.'" And again a little later, "I do so love him."