and began this, your very humble servant spent
very agreeably in a madhouse at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now,
and don't bite any one. But mad I was and many a vagary my imagination
played with me,--enough to make a volume, if all were told. My sonnets I
have extended to the number of nine since I saw you, and will some day
communicate to you. I am beginning a poem in blank verse, which, if I
finish, I publish. White [2] is on the eve of publishing (he took the
hint from Vortigern) "Original Letters of Falstaff, Shallow," etc.; a
copy you shall have when it comes out. They are without exception the
best imitations I ever saw. Coleridge, it may convince you of my regards
for you when I tell you my head ran on you in my madness as much almost
as on another person, who I am inclined to think was the more immediate
cause of my temporary frenzy.

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 in one of
my lucid intervals.

TO MY SISTER.

If from my lips some angry accents fell,
Peevish complaint, or harsh reproof unkind,
'T was but the error of a sickly mind
And troubled thoughts, clouding the purer well
And waters clear of Reason; and for me
Let this my verse the poor atonement be,--
My verse, which thou to praise wert e'er inclined
Too highly, and with partial eye to see
No blemish. Thou to me didst ever show
Kindest affection; and wouldst oft-times lend
An ear to the desponding love-sick lay,
Weeping my sorrows with me, who repay
But ill the mighty debt of love I owe,
Mary, to thee, my sister and my friend.

With these lines, and with that sister's kindest remembrances to Cottle,
I conclude.

Yours sincerely,

LAMB.

[1] Southey had just published his "Joan of Arc," in quarto. He and
Lovell had published jointly, two years before, "Poems by Bion and
Moschus."

[2] A Christ's Hospital schoolfellow, the "Jem" White of the Elia essay,
"The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers."

II.

TO COLERIDGE.

(_No month_) 1796.

_Tuesday night_.--Of your "Watchman," the review of Burke was the best
prose. I augured great things from the first number. There is some
exquisite poetry interspersed. I have re-read the extract from the
"Religious Musings," and retract whatever invidious there was in my
censure of it as elaborate. There are times when one is not in a
disposition tho