THE WORKS OF CHARLES AND MARY LAMB

IV. POEMS AND PLAYS


[Illustration: Charles Lamb (aged 23)
From a drawing by Robert Hancock]




POEMS AND PLAYS

BY

CHARLES AND MARY LAMB




INTRODUCTION

The earliest poem in this volume bears the date 1794, when Lamb was
nineteen, the latest 1834, the year of his death; so that it covers an
even longer period of his life than Vol. I.--the "Miscellaneous Prose."
The chronological order which was strictly observed in that volume has
been only partly observed in the following pages--since it seemed better
to keep the plays together and to make a separate section of Lamb's
epigrams. These, therefore, will be found to be outside the general
scheme. Such of Lamb's later poems as he did not himself collect in