John Thelwall (1764-1834)—­Citizen Thelwall—­was one of the most popular and uncompromising of the Radicals of the seventeen-nineties.  He belonged to the Society of the Friends of the People and other Jacobin confederacies.  In May, 1794, he was even sent to the Tower (with Home Tooke and Thomas Hardy) for sedition; moved to Newgate in October; and tried and acquitted in December.  Lamb first met him, I fancy, in 1797, when Thelwall was intimate with Coleridge.  After 1798 Thelwall’s political activities were changed for those of a lecturer on more pacific subjects, and later he opened an institution in London where he taught elocution and corrected the effects of malformation of the organs of speech.  He bought The Champion in 1818, and held it for two or three years, but it did not succeed.  Thelwall died in 1834.  Among his friends were Coleridge, Haydon, Hazlitt, Southey, Crabb Robinson and Lamb, all of whom, although they laughed at his excesses and excitements as a reformer, saw in him an invincible honesty and sincerity.

Before leaving this subject I should like to quote the following lines from The Champion of November 4 and 5, 1820:—­

A LADY’S SAPPHIC

Now the calm evening hastily approaches,
Not a sound stirring thro’ the gentle woodlands,
Save that soft Zephyr with his downy pinions

            Scatters fresh fragrance.

Now the pale sun-beams in the west declining
Gild the dew rising as the twilight deepens,
Beauty and splendour decorate the landscape;

            Night is approaching.

By the cool stream’s side pensively and sadly
Sit I, while birds sing on the branches sweetly,
And my sad thoughts all with their carols soothing,
Lull to oblivion. 
M.L.

A correspondence on English sapphics was carried on in The Champion for some weeks at this time, various efforts being printed.  On November 4 appeared the “Lady’s Sapphic,” just quoted, signed M.S.  On the following day—­for The Champion, like The Examiner, had a Saturday and Sunday edition—­this signature was changed to M.L., and was thus given when the verses were reprinted in The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion" in 1822.  There is no evidence that Mary Lamb wrote it; but she played with verse, and presumably read The Champion, since her brother was writing for it, and the poem might easily be hers.  Personally I like to think it is, and that Lamb, on seeing the mistake in the initials in the Saturday edition, hurried down to the office to have it put right in that of Sunday.  The same number of The Champion (November 4 and 5, 1820) contains another poem in the same measure signed C., which not improbably was Lamb’s contribution to the pastime.  It runs as follows:—­

   DANAE EXPOSED WITH HER INFANT

   An English Sapphic