Page 25. The Old Familiar Faces.

This, the best known of all Lamb’s poems, was written in January, 1798, following, it is suggested, upon a fit of resentment against Charles Lloyd.  Writing to Coleridge in that month Lamb tells of that little difference, adding, “but he has forgiven me.”  Mr. J.A.  Rutter, who, through Canon Ainger, enunciated this theory, thinks that Lloyd may be the “friend” of the fourth stanza, and Coleridge the “friend” of the sixth.  The old—­but untenable—­supposition was that it was Coleridge whom Lamb had left abruptly.  On the other hand it might possibly have been James White, especially as he was of a resolutely high-spirited disposition.

In its 1798 form the poem began with this stanza:—­

      Where are they gone, the old familiar faces? 
      I had a mother, but she died, and left me,
      Died prematurely in a day of horrors—­
      All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

And the last stanza began with the word “For,” and italicised the words

And some are taken from me.

I am inclined to think from this italicisation that it was Mary Lamb’s new seizure that was the real impulse of the poem.

The poem was dated January, 1798.  Lamb printed it twice—­in 1798 and 1818.

* * * * *

Page 26. Composed at Midnight.

On the appearance of Lamb’s Works, 1818, Leigh Hunt printed in The Examiner (February 7 and 8, 1819) the passage beginning with line 32, entitling it “A HINT to the GREATER CRIMINALS who are so fond of declaiming against the crimes of the poor and uneducated, and in favour of the torments of prisons and prison-ships in this world, and worse in the next.  Such a one, says the poet,

            ’on his couch
       Lolling, &c.’”

* * * * *

Page 28.  POEMS AT THE END OF JOHN WOODVIL, 1802.

The volume containing John Woodvil, 1802, which is placed in the present edition among Lamb’s plays, on page 149, included also the “Fragments of Burton” (see Vol.  I.) and two lyrics.

Page 28. Helen.

Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge on August 26, 1800, remarking:—­“How do you like this little epigram?  It is not my writing, nor had I any finger in it.  If you concur with me in thinking it very elegant and very original, I shall be tempted to name the author to you.  I will just hint that it is almost or quite a first attempt.”

The author was, of course, Mary Lamb.  In his Elia essay “Blakesmoor in H——­shire” in the London Magazine, September, 1824, Lamb quoted the poem, stating that “Bridget took the hint” of her “pretty whimsical lines” from a portrait of one of the Plumers’ ancestors.  The portrait was the cool pastoral beauty with a lamb, and it was partly to make fun of her brother’s passion for the picture that Mary wrote the lines.