e earliest effort in this
direction of which we have any knowledge is _The King and Queen of
Hearts_, 1805, and the latest _Prince Dorus_, 1810 or 1811, unless we
count _Beauty and the Beast_, possibly 1811, which in my opinion he
did not write.

Lamb first met William Godwin (1756-1836), the philosopher, probably
through the instrumentality of their mutual friend Thomas Holcroft,
not long after Gillray had satirised Lamb and Lloyd, in his plate in
the first number of _The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine_, August,
1798, as a frog and a toad, seated in the vicinity of Coleridge and
Southey and reading together a volume labelled "Blank Verse, by Toad
and Frog." "Pray, Mr. Lamb," said Godwin when he first made Lamb's
acquaintance, "are you toad or frog?" It was feared that trouble might
ensue, but Lamb and Godwin were found the next morning at breakfast
together and they became good, though never very intimate, friends.

Godwin, who had been for a while a minister at Ware, in Hertfordshire,
came to London in 1779, and took up literature as a profession
seriously in 1783. His _Political Justice_ was published in 1793,
_Caleb Williams_ in 1794, and _St. Leon_ in 1799. After loving at
a distance Mrs. Opie and Mrs. Inchbald, Godwin married Mary
Wollstonecraft in 1797. Their daughter afterwards became Mrs. Shelley,
the wife of the poet. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin died in the year of
her marriage, and in 1801 Godwin married again, a Mrs. Clairmont,
a widow. Lamb detested her. None the less it was she who took to
publishing and who incited him and his sister to write the charming
children's books in this volume.

Lamb helped Godwin with other literary ventures before the publishing
business was started. In 1800 he wrote an epilogue to his tragedy
of "Antonio" (see the essay in Vol. II., "The Old Actors," for a
description of the luckless first night), and he advised him in the
composition of "Faulkener," another tragedy, which failed in 1807 and
which also had a prologue by Lamb. And a letter is extant showing Lamb
toiling at a review of Godwin's _Chaucer_ in 1803, but the review
itself is not forthcoming.

The publishing business was started in 1805 on Mrs. Godwin's
initiative. At first, owing to the undesirability of connecting the
name of a political and moral firebrand like Godwin with books for
children, it was arranged that the business, which was in Hanway
Street, Oxford Street, should bear the name of the manager, T