Write your German as plain as sunshine, for that must correct itself. You know I am homo unius linguae: in English, illiterate, a dunce, a ninny.
[Having left Lamb, Coleridge went to Grasmere, where he stayed at Dove Cottage with Wordsworth and finished his translation, which was ready for the printer on April 22. To what Lamb alludes in his reference to the homily on "Realities" I cannot say, but presumably Coleridge had written a metaphysical letter on this subject. Lamb returns to the matter at the end of the first part of his reply.
Miss Wesley was Sarah Wesley (1760-1828), the daughter of Charles Wesley and, therefore, niece of the great John and Samuel. She moved much in literary society. Miss Benjay, or Benjé, was in reality Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger (1778-1827), a friend of Mrs. Inchbald, Mrs. Barbauld and the Aikins, and other literary people. Madame de Stael called her the most interesting woman she had met in England. She wrote novels and poems and biographies. In those days there were two East Streets, one leading from Red Lion Square to Lamb's Conduit Street, and one in the neighbourhood of Clare Market.
D'Israeli was Isaac Disraeli, the author of The Curiosities of
Literature and other books about books and authors; Miss More was
Hannah More, and her book, Strictures on the Modern System of Female
Education, 1799; Dr. Gregory I have not traced; Miss Seward was Anna
Seward, the Swan of Lichfield; and the Miss Porters were Jane and Anna
Maria, authors (later) respectively of The Scottish Chiefs and
Thaddeus of Warsaw, and The Hungarian Brothers.
The proof-sheets were those of Wallenstein. Henry Sampson Woodfall was the famous printer of the Letters of Junius.
Christabel, Coleridge's poem, had been begun in 1797; it was finished, in so far as it was finished, later in the year 1800. It was published first in 1816.
"Homo unius linguae." Lamb exaggerated here. He had much Latin, a little Greek and apparently a little French. The sentence is in the manner of Burton, whom Lamb had been imitating.
Here should come a letter dated April 23, 1800, to Robert Lloyd, which treats of obedience to parental wish. Lloyd seems to have objected to attend the meetings of the Society of Friends, of which he was a birthright member. Lamb bids him go; adding that, if his own parents were to live again, he would do more things to please them than merely sitting still a few hours in a week.]