Works of Charles and Mary Lamb. VI-VII. Letters
Charles Lamb to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 8 September
DEAR Coleridge,—I thought of not writing till we had performed some
of our commissions; but we have been hindered from setting about them, which
yet shall be done to a tittle. We got home very pleasantly on Sunday. Mary is a good deal fatigued, and finds the
difference of going to a place, and coming from it. I feel that I shall
remember your mountains to the last day I live. They haunt me perpetually. I am
like a man who has been falling in love unknown to himself, which he finds out
when he leaves the lady. I do not remember any very strong impression while
they were present; but, being gone, their mementos are shelved in my brain. We
passed a very pleasant little time with the Clarksons. The Wordsworths are at Montagu’s rooms, near neighbours to
us. They dined with us yesterday, and I was their guide to Bartlemy Fair!
Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846)
English abolitionist educated at St Paul's School and St John's, Cambridge; he was an
associate of William Wilberforce.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet and philosopher who projected
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
with William Wordsworth; author of
Biographia Literaria (1817),
On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829) and other
works.
Mary Anne Lamb (1764-1847)
Sister of Charles Lamb with whom she wrote Tales from Shakespeare (1807). She lived with
her brother, having killed their mother in a temporary fit of insanity.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
With Coleridge, author of
Lyrical Ballads (1798), Wordsworth
survived his early unpopularity to succeed Robert Southey as poet laureate in 1843.
