calculations." Further, he will support himself by the labor of his
hands. "If you can instruct me to manage an acre and a half of land, and
to raise in it, with my own hands, all kinds of vegetables and grain,
enough for myself and my wife and sufficient to feed a pig or two with
the refuse, I hope that you will have served me _most_ effectually by
placing me out of the necessity of being served." This was in December,
just before he moved to Stowey. In February he wrote from his new home
to another friend: "From seven till half past eight I work in my garden;
from breakfast till twelve I read and compose, then read again, feed the
pigs, poultry, etc., till two o'clock; after dinner work again till tea;
from tea till supper, _review_. So jogs the day, and I am happy.... I
raise potatoes and all manner of vegetables, have an orchard, and shall
raise corn with the spade, enough for my family. We have two pigs, and
ducks and geese. A cow would not answer the keep: we have whatever milk
we want from T. Poole."

There is a suspicious regularity about this schedule. Lamb wrote from
London in January: "Is it a farm that you have got? And what does your
worship know about farming?" His agricultural activity, in the month of
February, must have been chiefly prospective; and we may safely assume
that Poole supplied other things besides milk, and that the poet spent
more time reading, dreaming, and talking than he did raising potatoes. A
good deal of time must have been spent in the actual composition of his
poetry, including his play "Osorio," which was written in 1797, and in
studying the landscape beauties of the Quantocks. After the coming of
the Wordsworths to Alfoxden he spent much of the time walking between
Alfoxden and Stowey, or further afield with Wordsworth and his sister.
"My walks," he wrote afterwards, "were almost daily on the top of
Quantock, and among its sloping coombs. With my pencil and
memorandum-book in my hand, I was making studies, as the artists call