ted a collection of _Pieces
selected from the Italian Poets_, 1778; also editions of _Gerusalemme
Liberata_ and _Orlando Furioso_, and a book of _Italian Dialogues_. Emma
Isola is first mentioned by Lamb in an unpublished letter written to her
aunt, Miss Humphreys, in January, 1821, arranging for the little girl's
return to Trumpington Street, Cambridge, from London, where she had been
spending her holidays with the Lambs. The Lambs had met her at Cambridge
in the summer of 1820. The exact date of her adoption by the Lambs
cannot be ascertained now. Emma Isola married Edward Moxon in 1833, and
lived until 1891.

* * * * *

Page 58. _To the Same_.

Writing to Procter in January, 1829, Lamb calls Miss Isola "a silent
brown girl," and in his letter of November, 1833, to Mr. and Mrs. Moxon,
he says: "I hope you [Moxon] and Emma will have many a quarrel and many
a make-up (and she is beautiful in reconciliation!) ..." See the poem
"To a Friend on His Marriage," page 80, for a further description of
Emma Isola's character.

* * * * *

SONNETS

Page 58. _Harmony in Unlikeness_.

The two lovely damsels were Emma Isola and her friend Maria.

* * * * *

Page 59. _Written at Cambridge_.

This sonnet was first printed in _The Examiner_, August 29 and 30, 1819,
and was dated August 15. Lamb, we now know, from a letter recently
discovered, was in Cambridge in August, 1819, just after being refused
by Miss Kelly. Hazlitt in his essay "On the Conversation of Authors" in
the _London Magazine_ for September, 1820, referred to Lamb's visit to
him some years before, and his want of ease among rural surroundings,
adding: "But when we cross the country to Oxford, then he spoke a
little. He and the old collegers were hail-fellow-well-met: and in the
quadrangle he 'walked gowned.'"

Page 59. _To a Celebrated Female Performer in the "Blind Boy."_

First printed in the _Morning Chronicle_, 1819. "The Blind Boy,"
"attributed," says Genest, "to Hewetson," was produced in 1807. It was
revived from time to time. Miss Kelly used to play Edmond, the title
_role_.

Page 59. _Work_.

First printed in _The Examiner_, June 20 and 21, 1819, under the title
"Sonnet."

Many years earlier we see the germ of this sonnet in Lamb's mind, as
indeed we see the germ of so many ideas that were not fully expressed
till later, for he alwa