Page 17. _Lines addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol,
in the Summer of 1796._

_The Monthly Magazine,_ January, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb.

Lamb sent the lines in their original state to Coleridge in the letter
of July 5, 1796, immediately before the words "_Let us prose,_" at the
head of that document as it is now preserved.

"Another minstrel" was Coleridge. Chatterton was the mysterious youth of
line 16. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was baptised at St. Mary
Redcliffe, Bristol; he was the nephew of the sexton; he brooded for many
hours a day in the church; he copied his antique writing from the
parchment in its muniment room; one of his later dreams was to be able
to build a new spire; and a cenotaph to his memory was erected by public
subscription in 1840 near the north-east angle of the churchyard.
Chatterton went to London on April 24, 1770, aged seventeen and a half,
and died there by his own hand on August 25 of the same year.

The poem originated in an invitation to Lamb from the Coleridges at
Bristol, which he hoped to be able to accept; but to his request for the
necessary holiday from the India House came refusal. Lamb went to Nether
Stowey, however, in the following summer and met Wordsworth there.

Lamb at one time wished these lines to be included among his poems in
the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, 1797. Writing on January 18,
1797, Lamb says: "I shall be sorry if that volume comes out, as it
necessarily must do, unless you print those very school boyish verses I
sent you on not getting leave to come down to Bristol last summer." At
the end of the letter he adds: "Yet I should feel ashamed that to you I
wrote nothing better. But they are too personal, almost trifling and
obscure withal."

* * * * *

Page 18. _Sonnet to a Friend._

The _Monthly Magazine,_ October, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb.

Lamb sent this sonnet to Coleridge on January 2, 1797, remarking: "If
the fraternal sentiment conveyed in the following lines will atone for
the total want of any thing like merit or genius in it, I desire you
will print it next after my other Sonnet to my Sister." The other sonnet
was, "If from my lips some peevish accents fall," printed with
Coleridge's _Poems_ in 1797 (see page 9), concerning which book Lamb was
writing in the above letter. Coleridge apparently decided against the
present sonnet, for it was not printed in that book.

Writing to