Yours sincerely

LAMB.

Your Conciones ad populum are the most eloquent politics that ever came
in my way.

Write, when convenient--not as a task, for there is nothing in this
letter to answer.

You may inclose under cover to me at the India house what letters you
please, for they come post free.

We cannot send our remembrances to Mrs. C---- not having seen her, but
believe me our best good wishes attend you both.

My civic and poetic compts to Southey if at Bristol.--Why, he is a very
Leviathan of Bards--the small minnow I--

[This is the earliest letter of Lamb's that has come down to us. On
February 10, 1796, he was just twenty-one years old, and was now living
at 7 Little Queen Street (since demolished) with his father, mother,
Aunt Sarah Lamb (known as Aunt Hetty), Mary Lamb and, possibly, John
Lamb. John Lamb, senior, was doing nothing and had, I think, already
begun to break up: his old master, Samuel Salt, had died in February,
1792. John Lamb, the son (born June 5, 1763), had a clerkship at the
South-Sea House; Charles Lamb had begun his long period of service in
the India House; and Mary Lamb (born December 3, 1764) was occupied as a
mantua-maker.