"The Lass of Fair Wone."

The mention of the Statute de Contumelia seems to refer to the "Lines
Composed in a Concert-Room," which were first printed in the _Morning
Post_, September 24, 1799, but must have been written earlier. Madame
Mara (1749-1833) is not mentioned by name in the poem, but being one of
the principal singers of the day Lamb probably fastened the epithet upon
her by way of pleasantry; or she may have been referred to in the
version of the lines which Lamb had seen.

The passage about Mr. Chambers is not now explicable; but we know that
Mrs. Reynolds was Lamb's schoolmistress, probably when he was very
small, and before he went to William Bird's Academy, and that in later
life he allowed her a pension of L30 a year until her death.

Between this and the next letter came, in all probability, a number of
letters to Coleridge which have been lost. It is incredible that Lamb
kept silence, at this period, for eleven weeks.]




LETTER 8


CHARLES LAMB TO S.T. COLERIDGE

[P.M. September 27, 1796.]

My dearest friend--White or some of my friends or the public papers by