Lamb sent this sonnet to Coleridge on January 2, 1797, remarking:  “If the fraternal sentiment conveyed in the following lines will atone for the total want of any thing like merit or genius in it, I desire you will print it next after my other Sonnet to my Sister.”  The other sonnet was, “If from my lips some peevish accents fall,” printed with Coleridge’s Poems in 1797 (see page 9), concerning which book Lamb was writing in the above letter.  Coleridge apparently decided against the present sonnet, for it was not printed in that book.

Writing to Coleridge again a week later concerning the present poem, Lamb said:—­

“I am aware of the unpoetical caste of the 6 last lines of my last sonnet, and think myself unwarranted in smuggling so tame a thing into the book; only the sentiments of those 6 lines are thoroughly congenial to me in my state of mind, and I wish to accumulate perpetuating tokens of my affection to poor Mary.”

It has to be borne in mind that only three months had elapsed since the death of Mrs. Lamb, and Mary was still in confinement.

Page 18. To a Young Lady.  Signed C.L.

Monthly Magazine, March, 1797, afterwards copied into the Poetical Register for 1803, signed C.L. in both cases.  We know these to be Lamb’s from a letter to Coleridge of December 5, 1796.  The identity of the young lady is not now known.

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Page 19. Living without God in the World.

The Annual Anthology, Vol.  I., 1799.

Vol.  I. of the Annual Anthology, edited by Southey for Joseph Cottle, was issued in September, 1799; and that was, I believe, this poem’s first appearance as a whole.  Early in 1799, however, Charles Lloyd had issued a pamphlet entitled Lines suggested by the Fast appointed on Wednesday, February 27, 1799 (Birmingham, 1799), in which, in a note, he quotes a passage from Lamb’s poem, beginning, “some braver spirits” (line 23), and ending, “prey on carcasses” (line 36), with the prefatory remark:  “I am happy in the opportunity afforded me of introducing the following striking extract from some lines, intended as a satire on the Godwinian jargon.”

Writing to Southey concerning this poem, Lamb says:-"I can have no objection to you printing ‘Mystery of God’ [afterwards called ’Living without God in the World’] with my name, and all due acknowledgments for the honour and favour of the communication:  indeed, ’tis a poem that can dishonour no name.  Now, that is in the true strain of modern modesto vanitas.”

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Page 21. BLANK VERSE, BY CHARLES LLOYD AND CHARLES LAMB, 1798.