SONNETS
Page 58. Harmony in Unlikeness.
The two lovely damsels were Emma Isola and her friend Maria.
* * * * *
Page 59. Written at Cambridge.
This sonnet was first printed in The Examiner, August 29 and 30, 1819, and was dated August 15. Lamb, we now know, from a letter recently discovered, was in Cambridge in August, 1819, just after being refused by Miss Kelly. Hazlitt in his essay "On the Conversation of Authors" in the London Magazine for September, 1820, referred to Lamb's visit to him some years before, and his want of ease among rural surroundings, adding: "But when we cross the country to Oxford, then he spoke a little. He and the old collegers were hail-fellow-well-met: and in the quadrangle he 'walked gowned.'"
Page 59. To a Celebrated Female Performer in the "Blind Boy."
First printed in the Morning Chronicle, 1819. "The Blind Boy," "attributed," says Genest, "to Hewetson," was produced in 1807. It was revived from time to time. Miss Kelly used to play Edmond, the title rôle.
Page 59. Work.
First printed in The Examiner, June 20 and 21, 1819, under the title
"Sonnet."