The earliest productions of Lamb which have come down to us, namely,
verses, and criticism, and letters, are all in a grave and thoughtful
tone. The letters, at first, are on melancholy subjects, but afterwards
stray into criticism or into details of his readings, or an account of his
predilections for books and authors. At one or two and twenty, he had read
and formed opinions on Shakespeare, on Beaumont and Fletchcr, on
Massinger, Milton, Cowley, Isaac Walton, Burns, Collins, and others; some
of these, be it observed, lying much out of the ordinary course of a young
man's reading. He was also acquainted with the writings of Priestley and
Wesley, and Jonathan Edwards; for the first of whom he entertained the
deepest respect.

Lamb's verses were always good, steady, and firm, and void of those
magniloquent commonplaces which so clearly betray the immature writer.
They were at no time misty nor inconsequent, but contained proof that he
had reasoned out his idea. From the age of twenty-one to the age of fifty-
nine, when he died, he hated fine words and flourishes of rhetoric. His
imagination (not very lofty, perhaps) is to be discovered less in his
verse than in his prose humor, than in his letters and essays. In these it
was never trivial, but was always knit together by good sense, or softened
by tenderness. Real humor seldom makes its appearance in the first
literary ventures of young writers. Accordingly, symptoms of humor (which,
nevertheless, were not long delayed) are not to be discovered in Charles
Lamb's first letters or poems; the latter, when prepared for publication
in 1796, being especially grave. They are entitled "Poems by Charles Lamb
of the India House," and are inscribed to "Mary Anne Lamb, the author's
best friend and sister."

After some procrastination, the book containing them was published in
1797, conjointly with other verses by Coleridge and Charles Lloyd. "We