old school-fellow, Charles Lamb. He has now communicated to me a complete collection of all his poems; quæ qui non prorsus amet, illum omnes et virtutes et veneres odere." The phrase is a trifle grandiloquent to describe the short list-some fifteen in all-of sonnets and occasional verses here printed. Nor is there anything in their style to indicate the influence of new models. A tender grace of the type of his old favourite, Bowles, is still their chief merit, and they are interesting as showing how deeply the events of the past few years had stirred the religious side of Charles Lamb's nature. A review of the day characterized the manner of Lamb and Lloyd as "plaintive," and the epithet is not ill-chosen. Lamb was still living chiefly in the past, and the thought of his sister, and recollection of the pious "Grandame" in Hertfordshire, with kindred memories of his own childhood and disappointed affections, make the subject-matter of almost all the verse. A little allegorical poem, with the title of "A Vision of Repentance," relegated to an appendix in this same volume, marks the most sacred confidence that Lamb ever gave to the world as to his meditations on the mystery of evil. It is unlikely that this little venture brought any profit to its authors, or that a subsequent volume of blank verse by Lamb and Lloyd in the following year was more remunerative. To Lloyd the question was doubtless of less importance; but Lamb was anxious for his sister's sake to add to his scanty income, and with this view he resolved to make an experiment in prose fiction. In the year 1798 he composed his little story, bearing the title, as originally issued, of A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret. This "miniature romance," as Talfourd calls it, is per 66 66 haps better known, after the Essays of Elia, than any of Lamb's writings, and the secret of its charm, in the face of improbabilities and unrealities of many kinds, is one of the curiosities of literature. The story itself is built up of the most heterogeneous materials. The idea of the story, the ruin of a village maiden, Rosamund Gray, by a melodramatic villain with the uncommon" name of Matravis, was suggested to Lamb, as he admits in a letter to Southey, by a "foolish" (and it must be added, a very scurrilous) old ballad about an old woman clothed in grey." The name of his heroine he borrowed from some verses of his friend Lloyd's (not included in their joint volume), and that of the villain from one of the ruffians employed to murder the king in Marlowe's Edward the Second-that death-scene which he afterwards told the world "moved pity and terror beyond any scene ancient or modern" with which he was acquainted. The conduct of the little story bears strong traces of the influence of Richardson and Mackenzie, and a rather forced reference to the latter's Julia de Roubigné seems to show where he had lately been reading. A portion of the narrative is conducted by correspondence between the two well-bred young ladies of the story, and when one of them begins a letter to her cousin, "Health, innocence, and beauty shall be thy bridesmaids, my sweet cousin," we are at once aware in what school of polite letter-writing the author had studied. After the heroine, the two principal characters are a brother and sister, Allan and Elinor Clare, the relation between whom (the sister is represented as just ten years older than her brother) is borrowed almost without disguise from that of Lamb and his sister Mary. "Elinor Clare was the best good creature, the least selfish human being I ever knew, always at work for other people's good, planning other people's happiness, continually forgetful to consult for her own personal gratifications, except indirectly in the welfare of another; while her parents lived, the most attentive of daughters; since they died, the kindest of sisters. I never knew but one like her." There is besides a school-fellow of Allan's, who precedes him to college, evidently a recollection of the school-friendship with Coleridge. But still more significant, as showing the personal element in the little romance, is the circumstance that Lamb lays the scene of it in that Hertfordshire village of Widford where so many of his own happiest hours had been spent, and that the heroine, Rosamund Gray, is drawn with those features on which he was never weary of dwelling in the object of his own boyish passion. Rosamund, with the pale blue eyes and the "yellow Hertfordshire hair," is but a fresh copy of his Anna and his Alice. That Rosamund Gray had an actual counterpart in real life seems certain, and the little group of cottages, in one of which she dwelt with her old grandmother, is still shown in the village of Widford, about half a mile from the site of the old mansion of Blakesware. And it is the tradition of the village, and believed by those who have the best means of judging, that "Rosamund Gray" (her real name was equally remote from this, and from Alice W-n) was Charles Lamb's first and only love. Her fair hair and eyes, her goodness, and (we may assume) her poverty, were drawn from life. The rest of the story in which she bears a part is of course pure fiction. The real Anna of the sonnets made a prosperous marriage, and lived to a good old age. As if Lamb were resolved to give his little tale the' character of personal "confessions," he has contrived to introduce into it, by quotation or allusion, all his favourite writers, from Walton and Wither to Mackenzie and Burns. But of more interest from this point of view than any resemblances of detail is the shadow, as of recent calamity, that rests upon the story, and the strain of religious emotion that pervades it. It is this that gives the romance, conventional as it is for the most part in its treatment of life and manners, its real attractiveness. It is redolent of Lamb's native sweetness of heart, delicacy of feeling, and undefinable charm of style. And these qualities did not altogether fail to attract attention. The little venture was a moderate success, and brought its author some "few guineas." One tribute to its merits was paid many years later, which, we may hope, did not fail to reach the author. Shelley, writing to Leigh Hunt from Leghorn, in 1819, and acknowledging the receipt of a parcel of books, adds, "With it came, too, Lamb's works. What a lovely thing is his Rosamund Gray! How much knowledge of the sweetest and deepest part of our nature in it! When I think of such a mind as Lamb's, when I see how unnoticed remain things of such exquisite and complete perfection, what should I hope for myself, if I had not higher objects in view than fame?" There is scanty material for the biographer of Lamb and his sister during these first four years of struggling poverty. The few events that varied their monotonous life are to be gathered from the letters to Coleridge and Southey, written during this period. The former was married, and living at Nether Stowey, near Bristol, where Charles and Mary Lamb paid him apparently their first visit, during one of Charles' short holidays in the summer of 1797. This visit was made memorable by a slight accident that befell Coleridge on the day of their arrival, and forced him to remain at home while his visitors explored the surrounding country. Left alone in his garden, he composed the curiously Wordsworthian lines, bearing for title (he was perhaps reminded of Ferdinand, in the Tempest), "This lime-tree bower my prison," in which he apostrophizes Lamb as the "gentle-hearted Charles," and addresses him as one who had "Hungered after nature, many a year In the great city pent, winning thy way With sad and patient zeal, through evil and pain Charles did not quite relish the epithet "gentle-hearted," and showed that he winced under a title that savoured a little of pity or condescension. Indeed, it is evident, in spite of the real affection that Lamb never ceased to feel for Coleridge, that the relations between the friends were often strained during these earlier days. This year, 1797, was that of the joint volume, and the mutual criticism indulged so freely by both was leaving a little soreness behind. Then there was the question of precedence between Lamb and Lloyd in this same volume, which was settled in Lloyd's favour, not without a few pangs, confessed by Lamb himself. And when, in the following year, Coleridge was on the eve of his visit to Germany with the Wordsworths, a foolish message of his, "If Lamb requires any knowledge, let him apply to me," had been repeated to Lamb by some injudicious friend, and did not tend to improve matters. Lamb retaliated by sending Coleridge a grimly humorous list of "Theses quædam Theologica," to be by him "defended or oppugned (or both) at Leipsic or Göttingen." Numbers five and six in this list may be given as a sample. "Whether the higher order of Ser |