Coleridge told Southey that Lamb during his derangement at the end of 1795 and beginning of 1796 believed himself at one time to be Young Norval.

Lamb printed this poem, which differs curiously in character from all his other poetical works, only once—­in 1797.

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Page 12. To Charles Lloyd.

Lamb copied these lines in a letter to Coleridge on January 18, 1797, remarking:—­“You have learned by this time, with surprise, no doubt, that Lloyd is with me in town.  The emotions I felt on his coming so unlooked for are not ill expressed in what follows, and what if you do not object to them as too personal, and to the world obscure, or otherwise wanting in worth I should wish to make a part of our little volume.”

It must be remembered, in reading the poem, that Lamb was still in the shadow of the tragedy in which he lost his mother, and, for a while, his sister, and which had ruined his home.  For other lines to Charles Lloyd see page 21.  This poem was printed by Lamb twice—­in 1797 and 1818.

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Page 13. A Vision of Repentance.

Writing to Coleridge on June 13, 1797, Lamb says of this Spenserian exercise:—­“You speak slightingly.  Surely the longer stanzas were pretty tolerable; at least there was one good line in it [line 5]: 

“Thick-shaded trees, with dark green leaf rich clad.

To adopt your own expression, I call this a ‘rich’ line, a fine full line.  And some others I thought even beautiful.”  Lamb printed the poem twice—­in 1797 and 1818.

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Page 16.  POEMS WRITTEN IN THE YEARS 1795-1798, AND NOT REPRINTED BY LAMB.

Page 16. Sonnet:  The Lord of Life shakes off his drowsihed.

The Monthly Magazine, December, 1797.  Signed Charles Lamb.

Lamb sent the first draft of this sonnet to Coleridge in 1796, saying that it was composed “during a walk down into Hertfordshire early in last Summer.”  “The last line,” he adds, “is a copy of Bowles’s ’to the green hamlet in the peaceful plain.’  Your ears are not so very fastidious—­many people would not like words so prosaic and familiar in a sonnet as Islington and Hertfordshire.”  We must take Lamb’s word for it; but the late W.J.  Craig found for the last line a nearer parallel than Bowles’.  In William Vallans’ “Tale of the Two Swannes” (1590), which is quoted in Leland’s Itinerary, Hearne’s edition, is the phrase:  “The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire.”  Lamb quotes his own line in the Elia essay “My Relations.”

This sonnet is perhaps the only occasion on which Lamb, even in play, wrote anything against his beloved city.

It may be noted here that this was Lamb’s last contribution to the Monthly Magazine, which had printed in the preceding number, November, 1797, Coleridge’s satirical sonnets, signed Nehemiah Higginbottom, in which Lamb and Lloyd were ridiculed, and which had perhaps some bearing on the coolness that for a while was to subsist between Coleridge and Lamb (see Charles Lamb and the Lloyds, 1898, pages 44-47).