Once more good night.

[Coleridge, on November 2, had begun to suffer from his lifelong enemy,
neuralgia, the result largely of worry concerning his future, so many of
his projects having broken down. He was subduing it with laudanum--the
beginning of that fatal habit.

We do not know what were the verses which Coleridge had sent Lamb,
possibly the three sonnets on the birth of Hartley, the third of which
is referred to below.

Lamb's decision in September to say or hear no more of his own poetry
here breaks down. The reference to the Fairy Land sonnet is only
partially explained by the parallel version which I printed on page 25;
for "Fairy Land" was Coleridge's version. Either Lamb had made a new
version, substituting "Fairy Land" for "Faery," or he wrote, "I allow it
to run thus: Fairy Land, &c., &c., as _you_ last wrote it." When
reprinted, however, it ran as Lamb originally wished. The other
fragments were those afterwards included in Coleridge's _Poems_, second
edition, 1797.

"Love Sonnets." Lamb changed his mind again on this subject, and yet
again.

Coleridge's last of the three sonnets on the birth of Hartley was
entitled "Sonnet to a Friend [Charles Lloyd] who asked how I felt when
the Nurse first presented my Infant to me." It closed with the lines
which Lamb copies.]