STORIES

After essaying poetry and the drama (for both of which he maintained a
lifelong liking, writing in each form during his latest years), the
next kind of literary expression on which Lamb ventured was that of
stories and verses for children. In "Rosamund Gray," which is scarcely
a tale for children but rather a classic novelette, he gives the story
of a young orphan girl living at Widford in Hertfordshire with her
blind grandmother. The girl is beloved by young Allan Clare, and one
evening, wandering in sheer joy over the scenes of past delightful
rambles, she is assailed by a villain. Her blind grandmother finding
her gone from the cottage dies of a broken heart, and poor Rosamund,
disgraced and terrified, seeks the home of Allan and his sister and
there dies. It is a terrible story told with a beautiful simplicity.
Of how far it may have been founded on fact we do not know, but in
Rosamund, Lamb seems to have depicted something of a likeness of the
"fair-haired maid" with whom he had been in love, and in Elinor Clare
there can be no doubt that he portrayed much of the character of his
own loved sister.

The first of Lamb's known publications professedly for children was
"The King and Queen of Hearts: showing how notably the Queen made her
Tarts, and how scurvily the Knave stole them away: with other
particulars pertaining thereto," and this was only recovered about ten
years since after having been forgotten for the best part of a
century. The booklet, which was issued anonymously, consists of a
number of rough pictures, each accompanied by half a dozen lines of
Hudibrastic verse; the inspiration being of course the old nursery
rhyme about the tarts made by the Queen of Hearts and their subsequent