E. G. J. September, 1891.

[1] Letter L.

[2] Cowley.

[3] The James Elia of the essay “My Relations.”

[4] Letter I.

[5] Talfourd’s Memoir.

[6] Carlyle.

[7] It would seem from Lamb’s letter to Coleridge (Letter IV.) that it was he, not the landlord, who appeared thus too late, and who snatched the knife from the unconscious hand.

[8] The reader is referred to Lamb’s beautiful essay, “Dream Children.”

[9] If we except his passing tenderness for the young Quakeress, Hester Savory, Lamb admitted that he had never spoken to the lady in his life.

[10] Letter LXXXIII.

[11] Letters LXV IL., LXVIII., LXIX.

[12] W. S. Landor.

[13] In assuming this pseudonym Lamb borrowed the name of a fellow-clerk who had served with him thirty years before in the South Sea House,—­an Italian named Elia.  The name has probably never been pronounced as Lamb intended. “Call him Ellia,” he said in a letter to J. Taylor, concerning this old acquaintance.

[14] Letter XVII.

[15] The rather unimportant series, “Popular Fallacies,” appeared in the “New Monthly.”

[16] In the essay “The Superannuated Man” Lamb describes, with certain changes and modifications, his retirement from the India House.

I.

TO SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

May 27, 1796.

Dear Coleridge,—­Make yourself perfectly easy about May.  I paid his bill when I sent your clothes.  I was flush of money, and am so still to all the purposes of a single life; so give yourself no further concern about it.  The money would be superfluous to me if I had it.

When Southey becomes as modest as his predecessor, Milton, and publishes his Epics in duodecimo, I will read ’em; a guinea a book is somewhat exorbitant, nor have I the opportunity of borrowing the work.  The extracts from it in the “Monthly Review,” and the short passages in your “Watchman,” seem to me much superior to anything in his partnership account with Lovell. [1] Your poems I shall procure forthwith.

There were noble lines in what you inserted in one of your numbers from “Religious Musings,” but I thought them elaborate.  I am somewhat glad you have given up that paper; it must have been dry, unprofitable, and of dissonant mood to your disposition.  I wish you success in all your undertakings, and am glad to hear you are employed about the “Evidences of Religion.”  There is need of multiplying such books a hundred-fold in this philosophical age, to prevent converts to atheism, for they seem too tough disputants to meddle with afterwards....