[Southey's letters contain a glimpse (as Mr. J.A. Rutter has pointed
out) of Lamb and Manning by punch-light. Writing in 1824, describing a
certain expression of Mrs. Coleridge's face, Southey says:--

First, then, it was an expression of dolorous alarm, such as Le Brun
ought to have painted: but such as Manning never could have equalled,
when, while Mrs. Lloyd was keeping her room in child-bed, he and Charles
Lamb sate drinking punch in the room below till three in the morning--
Manning acting Le Brun's passions (punchified at the time), and Charles
Lamb (punchified also) roaring aloud and swearing, while the tears ran
down his cheeks, that it required more genius than even Shakespeare
possessed to personate them so well; Charles Lloyd the while (not
punchified) praying and entreating them to go to bed, and not disturb
his wife by the uproar they were making.

Southey's reminiscence, though interesting, is very confusing. Lamb does
not seem to have visited Cambridge between the end of 1799 and January
5, 1800. At the latter date the Lloyds were in the north. Possibly
Southey refers to an earlier illness of Mrs. Lloyd, which, writing after
a long interval, he confused with confinement.

"Balzac." Not, of course, the novelist; but Jean Louis Guez de Balzac
(1594-1654) the letter-writer.

Two or three lines have been omitted from this letter which can be read
as written only in the Boston Bibliophile edition.]