AT FIRST and for a long time, Lamb conceived his destiny to be
that of poet. At Christ's Hospital he and Coleridge often talked
of poetic subjects and later as young men in their long evenings
at the Salutation and Cat they argued many poetic questions,
such as metre, vocabulary and the treatment of nature in verse.
His first poetry included sonnets to Mrs. Siddons, to Anna, and
his sister Mary, and also poems expressing a fondness for scenes
of childhood. When Coleridge published his first poems in
1796, he included four sonnets by Lamb with these compli-
mentary words, "The effusions signed ' C. L.' were written by
Mr. Charles Lamb of the India House; independently of their
signature, their superior merit would have sufficiently distin-
guished them." Very good for the young clerk of twenty-one,
who had been only four years with the India Company. But
neither was Coleridge so well known in 1796.

After the tragedy in September of that year, it will be remem-
bered, Lamb destroyed everything he had written. We do not
know whether later he recalled some of these poems, but he
never entirely gave up the writing of verse.

During the rest of his life he wrote sonnets, many occas-
sional poems, epigrams, epitaphs, acrostics and album verses,
besides prologues and epilogues and plays in blank verse. At the
beginning his verse showed the influence of Bowles, that plain-
tive sonneteer whose poetry appeared while Lamb and Cole-
ridge were at Christ's Hospital. As Lamb's interests extended

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