LETTER 1


CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE

[Postmark May 27, 1796.]

DEAR C---- make yourself perfectly easy about May. I paid his bill, when
I sent your clothes. I was flush of money, and am so still to all the
purposes of a single life, so give yourself no further concern about it.
The money would be superfluous to me, if I had it.

With regard to Allen,--the woman he has married has some money, I have
heard about L200 a year, enough for the maintenance of herself &
children, one of whom is a girl nine years old! so Allen has dipt
betimes into the cares of a family. I very seldom see him, & do not know
whether he has given up the Westminster hospital.

When Southey becomes as modest as his predecessor Milton, and publishes
his Epics in duodecimo, I will read 'em,--a Guinea a book is somewhat
exorbitant, nor have I the opportunity of borrowing the Work. The
extracts from it in the Monthly Review and the short passages in your
Watchman seem to me much superior to any thing in his partnership
account with Lovell.

Your poems I shall procure forthwith. There were noble lines in what you
inserted in one of your Numbers from Religious Musings, but I thought