C. L.
[The first number of The Friend was dated June 1, 1809.
Lamb's Dramatic Specimens had been reviewed in the Annual Review for 1808, with discrimination and approval (see Vol. IV. of my large edition), but whether or not by Coleridge I do not know.
Wordsworth's book was his pamphlet on the "Convention of Cintra."
The Juvenile Poetry was Poetry for Children. Entirely Original. By the
author of Mrs. Leicester's School. In two volumes, 1809. Mrs.
Leicester's School, 1809, had been published a little before.
Wordsworth's favourite tale was Arabella Hardy's "The Sea Voyage."
I know nothing of the annotated copy of Sidney's Arcadia. Daniel's
Poetical Works, 12mo, 1718, two volumes, with marginalia by Lamb and
Coleridge, is still preserved. The copy of Hannah More's Coelebs in
Search of a Wife, 1809, with Lamb's verses, is not, I think, now known.
Southey's missionary article was in the first number of the Quarterly,
February, 1809.
Hervey wrote Meditations among the Tombs; Sir Thomas Browne, Urn
Burial.
Here should come four letters from Lamb to Charles Lloyd, Senior. They are all printed in Charles Lamb and the Lloyds. The first, dated June 13, 1809, contains an interesting criticism of a translation of the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, which Charles Lloyd, the father of Robert Lloyd, had made. Lamb says that what he misses, and misses also in Pope, is a savage-like plainness of speaking.
"The heroes in Homer are not half civilized—they utter all the cruel, all the selfish, all the mean thoughts even of their nature, which it is the fashion of our great men to keep in."