Nether Stowey with Coleridge,[2] and in the autumn he and Lloyd passed
a fortnight with Southey in Hampshire. He was consolidating the
friendships which were to bind him ever closer to letters. With
Coleridge, as we have seen, he was on terms of intimacy, and when that
poet went abroad for a while Southey became Lamb's most intimate
correspondent. The keenly sensitive young man later resented being
dubbed "gentle-hearted," and an apparent assumption of lofty
superiority on the part of his friend, stung him to a memorable
retort. We may take the story from one of Lamb's own letters to
Southey:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the eternal regret of his native
Devonshire, emigrates to Westphalia: "poor Lamb" (these were
his last words), if he wants any knowledge, he may apply to
me. In ordinary cases I thank him. I have an "Encyclopaedia"
at hand; but on such an occasion as going over to a German
University, I could not refrain from sending him the
following proposition to be by him defended or oppugned (or
both) at Leipsic or Gottingen.

[Footnote 2: Coleridge, disabled by some slight accident, was unable
to accompany his friends on their walks during this visit of the
Lambs, and once when they had left him he wrote the beautiful poem,
"This Lime Tree Bower My Prison," which he "addressed to Charles Lamb,
of the India House, London." In it that friend was referred to in this
passage:

Yes! they wander on
In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,
My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined