which he sent to his friend at the time. The shattered family removed
from Little Queen Street to 45, Chapel Street, Pentonville, and there
in the following year Aunt Hetty died. In the spring of 1799 old John
Lamb also passed away, and Mary returned to share her brother's home,
to be tended always with loving solicitude, though ever and again she
had to be removed during recurring attacks of her mental malady. In
this brief summary of the story of Charles Lamb's life it is not
necessary to keep referring to this fact, though it should be borne in
mind that from time to time throughout their lives, Mary, affected now
by solitariness and now by the over-excitement of seeing many friends,
had to be placed under restraint for periods varying from a few weeks
to several months. In this spring of 1799, too, with Mary's return to
share her brother's life, began a new trouble. They were, as Lamb put
it, "in a manner marked," and had frequently to change their lodgings
until they were once more domiciled in the sanctuary of the Temple,
where they had been born and where they had passed their childhood and
youth.

[Illustration: CHRIST'S HOSPITAL: THE DINING HALL.]

In the first feeling of his horror after his mother's death, and with
a sense of all the responsibility that had fallen upon his shoulders
Lamb had disclaimed any further interest in literature, had asked
Coleridge not to mention it, not to include his name in a projected
volume. Yet he was to find in reading and in writing--and in the
friendship of those who cared for reading and writing--at once a
solace and a joy in his own life and a passport to the affections of
generations of readers. In 1797 there was published a new edition of
Coleridge's Poems, "to which are now added Poems by Charles Lamb and
Charles Lloyd." In the summer of the same year he spent a week at