Examiner, October 24 and 25, 1819. Signed ****. Not reprinted by Lamb. Lamb and Lloyd had been intimate friends in 1797 and 1798, when they produced together Blank Verse, and when for a while Lloyd shared rooms with James White. But serious differences arose which need not be inquired into here, and after 1800 they drifted apart and were never really friendly again. Lloyd settled among the Lakes, where at frequent intervals for many years he became the prey of religious mania. In 1818, however, the clouds effectually dispersed for a while, and, returning to London, he resumed the poetical activity of his early life. The new pieces in Nugæ Canoræ, 1819, were the first-fruit of this period, which lasted until 1823. He then relapsed into his old state and died, lost to the world, in 1839. Writing to Lloyd concerning his later poetry Lamb said: "Your lines are not to be understood reading on one leg."
In Lloyd's poem, "Desultory Thoughts in London," 1821, are portraits of both Coleridge and Lamb. One stanza on Lamb has these lines:—
It is a dainty banquet, known to few,
To thy mind's inner shrine to have access;
While choicest stores of intellect endue
That sanctuary, in marvellous excess.
Those lambent glories ever bright and new,
Those, privileged to be its inmates, bless!
This shows that Lloyd retained his old affection and admiration for Lamb, just as Lamb's willingness to review Lloyd shows that he had forgotten the past. The quotations have been corrected from Lloyd's pages.
[Page 230,] line 15. Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1759-1797), the first wife of William Godwin, and the advocate of women's independence. Charles Lloyd had known her in his early London days.
[Page 232.] III.—Barron Field's Poems.
Examiner, January 16 and 17, 1820. Signed ****. Not reprinted by Lamb.
Barron Field (1786-1846), son of Henry Field, apothecary to Christ's Hospital, was long one of Lamb's friends, possibly through his brother, a fellow clerk of Lamb's in the India House. See the Elia essays on "Distant Correspondents" and "Mackery End," and notes. Field was in Australia from 1817 to 1824 as Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. His First-Fruits of Australian Poetry was printed privately in 1819 and afterwards added as an appendix to Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales, 1825.
[Page 232.] Motto. "I first adventure...." An adaptation of the couplet in Hall's satires:—
I first adventure. Follow me who list,
And be the second English satirist.