Before leaving this subject I should like to quote the following lines from The Champion of November 4 and 5, 1820:—
A LADY'S SAPPHIC
Now the calm evening hastily approaches,
Not a sound stirring thro' the gentle woodlands,
Save that soft Zephyr with his downy pinions
Scatters fresh fragrance.
Now the pale sun-beams in the west declining
Gild the dew rising as the twilight deepens,
Beauty and splendour decorate the landscape;
Night is approaching.
By the cool stream's side pensively and sadly
Sit I, while birds sing on the branches sweetly,
And my sad thoughts all with their carols soothing,
Lull to oblivion.
M.L.
A correspondence on English sapphics was carried on in The Champion for some weeks at this time, various efforts being printed. On November 4 appeared the "Lady's Sapphic," just quoted, signed M.S. On the following day—for The Champion, like The Examiner, had a Saturday and Sunday edition—this signature was changed to M.L., and was thus given when the verses were reprinted in The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion" in 1822. There is no evidence that Mary Lamb wrote it; but she played with verse, and presumably read The Champion, since her brother was writing for it, and the poem might easily be hers. Personally I like to think it is, and that Lamb, on seeing the mistake in the initials in the Saturday edition, hurried down to the office to have it put right in that of Sunday. The same number of The Champion (November 4 and 5, 1820) contains another poem in the same measure signed C., which not improbably was Lamb's contribution to the pastime. It runs as follows:—
DANAE EXPOSED WITH HER INFANT
An English Sapphic
Dim were the stars, and clouded was the azure, Silence in darkness
brooded on the ocean, Save when the wave upon the pebbled sea-beach
Faintly resounded.
Then, O forsaken daughter of Acrisius! Seiz'd in the hour of woe and
tribulation, Thou, with the guiltless victim of thy love, didst Rock on
the surges.