it says about Lamb's last letter to Coleridge (clearly that of May 12),
and the time that has since elapsed. The birth of Charles Lloyd's first
child, July 31, gives us the latest date to which Letter 60 could
belong.

"Your theory ..." This may have been contained in one of Coleridge's
letters, now lost; I do not find it in any of the known _Morning Post_
articles.]




LETTER 56


CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

Monday, May 12th, 1800.

My dear Coleridge--I don't know why I write, except from the propensity
misery has to tell her griefs. Hetty died on Friday night, about eleven
o'clock, after eight days' illness; Mary, in consequence of fatigue and
anxiety, is fallen ill again, and I was obliged to remove her yesterday.
I am left alone in a house with nothing but Hetty's dead body to keep me
company. To-morrow I bury her, and then I shall be quite alone, with
nothing but a cat to remind me that the house has been full of living
beings like myself. My heart is quite sunk, and I don't know where to
look for relief. Mary will get better again; but her constantly being
liable to such relapses is dreadful; nor is it the least of our evils
that her case and all our story is so well known around us. We are in a