Page 16. To the Poet Cowper.

The Monthly Magazine, December, 1796.  Signed C. Lamb.

Lamb wrote these lines certainly as early as July, 1796, for he sends them to Coleridge on the 6th of that month, adding:—­

“I fear you will not accord entirely with my sentiments of Cowper, as exprest above, (perhaps scarcely just), but the poor Gentleman has just recovered from his Lunacies, and that begets pity, and pity love, and love admiration, and then it goes hard with People but they lie!”

Lamb admired Cowper greatly in those days—­particularly his “Crazy Kate” ("Task,” Book I., 534-556).  “I have been reading ‘The Task’ with fresh delight,” he says on December 5, 1796.  “I am glad you love Cowper.  I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that man my friend, who should be offended with the ’divine chit-chat of Cowper.’” And again a little later, “I do so love him.”

Page 17. Lines addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol, in the Summer of 1796.

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

Lamb sent the lines in their original state to Coleridge in the letter of July 5, 1796, immediately before the words “Let us prose,” at the head of that document as it is now preserved.

“Another minstrel” was Coleridge.  Chatterton was the mysterious youth of line 16.  Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was baptised at St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol; he was the nephew of the sexton; he brooded for many hours a day in the church; he copied his antique writing from the parchment in its muniment room; one of his later dreams was to be able to build a new spire; and a cenotaph to his memory was erected by public subscription in 1840 near the north-east angle of the churchyard.  Chatterton went to London on April 24, 1770, aged seventeen and a half, and died there by his own hand on August 25 of the same year.

The poem originated in an invitation to Lamb from the Coleridges at Bristol, which he hoped to be able to accept; but to his request for the necessary holiday from the India House came refusal.  Lamb went to Nether Stowey, however, in the following summer and met Wordsworth there.

Lamb at one time wished these lines to be included among his poems in the second edition of Coleridge’s Poems, 1797.  Writing on January 18, 1797, Lamb says:  “I shall be sorry if that volume comes out, as it necessarily must do, unless you print those very school boyish verses I sent you on not getting leave to come down to Bristol last summer.”  At the end of the letter he adds:  “Yet I should feel ashamed that to you I wrote nothing better.  But they are too personal, almost trifling and obscure withal.”

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Page 18. Sonnet to a Friend.

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