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Page 32.  THE WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB, 1818.

This book, in two volumes, was published by C. & J. Ollier in 1818:  the first volume containing the dedication to Coleridge that is here printed on page 1, all of Lamb’s poetry that he then wished to preserve, “John Woodvil,” “The Witch,” the “Fragments of Burton,” “Rosamund Gray” and “Recollections of Christ’s Hospital;” the second volume, dedicated to Martin Charles Burney in the sonnet on page 45, containing criticisms, essays and “Mr. H.”

The scheme of the present volume makes it impossible to keep together the poetical portion of Lamb’s Works.  In order, however, to present clearly to the reader Lamb’s mature selection, in 1818, of the poetry by which he wished to be known, I have indicated the position in his Works of those poems that have already been printed on earlier pages.

Page 32. Hester.

Lamb sent this poem to Manning in March, 1803—­“I send you some verses I have made on the death of a young Quaker you may have heard me speak of as being in love with for some years while I lived at Pentonville, though I had never spoken to her in my life.  She died about a month since.”

Hester Savory was the daughter of Joseph Savory, a goldsmith in the Strand.  She was born in 1777 and was thus by two years Lamb’s junior.  She married, in July, 1802, Charles Stoke Dudley, a merchant, and she died in February of the following year, and was buried at Bunhill Fields.  Lamb was living in Pentonville from the end of 1796 until 1799.

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Page 33. Dialogue between a Mother and Child. By Mary Lamb.

Charles Lamb, writing to Dorothy Wordsworth on June 2, 1804, says:  “I send you two little copies of verses by Mary L—­b.”  Then follow this “Dialogue” and the “Lady Blanch” verses on page 41.  Lamb adds at the end:  “I wish they may please you:  we in these parts are not a little proud of them.”

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Page 34. A Farewell to Tobacco.

First printed in The Reflector, No.  IV., 1811.

Lamb had begun to think poetically of tobacco as early as 1803.  Writing to Coleridge in April 13 of that year, he says:—­“What do you think of smoking?  I want your sober, average, noon opinion of it.  I generally am eating my dinner about the time I should determine it.  Morning is a girl, and can’t smoke—­she’s no evidence one way or the other; and Night is so [? evidently] bought over, that he can’t be a very upright judge.  May be the truth is, that one pipe is wholesome; two pipes toothsome; three pipes noisome; four pipes fulsome; five pipes quarrelsome; and that’s the sum on’t.  But that is deciding rather upon rhyme than reason.”

Writing to William and Dorothy Wordsworth on September 28, 1805, Lamb remarked regarding his literary plans:—­“Sometimes I think of a farce—­but hitherto all schemes have gone off,—­an idle brag or two of an evening vaporing out of a pipe, and going off in the morning—­but now I have bid farewell to my ‘Sweet Enemy’ Tobacco, as you will see in my next page, I perhaps shall set soberly to work.  Hang work!”