It is concerning these lines that Lamb writes to Barton, in 1827:— "Adieu to Albums—for a great while—I said when I came here, and had not been fixed two days, but my Landlord's daughter (not at the Pot-house) requested me to write in her female friend's, and in her own. If I go to —— thou art there also, O all pervading Album! All over the Leeward Islands, in Newfoundland, and the Back Settlements, I understand there is no other reading. They haunt me. I die of Albo-phobia!"
Page 111. Un Solitaire.
E.I., who made the drawing in question, would be Emma Isola. The verses were copied by Lamb into his Album, which is now in the possession of Mrs. Alfred Morrison.
Page 111. To S[arah] T[homas].
From Lamb's Album. I have not been able to trace this lady.
Page 111. To Mrs. Sarah Robinson.
From the copy preserved among Henry Crabb Robinson's papers at Dr. Williams' Library. Sarah Robinson was the niece of H.C.R., who was the pilgrim in Rome. The stranger to thy land was Emma Isola, Fornham, in Suffolk, where she was living, being near to Bury St. Edmunds, the home of the Robinsons.
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Page 112. To Sarah.
From the Album of Sarah Apsey. Lamb seems to have known very many
Sarahs.