Coleridge's employment on the Evidences of Religion, whatever it may have been, did not reach print.
Le Grice was Charles Valentine Le Grice (1773-1858), an old Christ's Hospitaller and Grecian (see Lamb's Elia essays on "Christ's Hospital" and "Grace before Meat"). Le Grice passed to Trinity College, Cambridge. He left in 1796 and became tutor to William John Godolphin Nicholls of Trereife, near Penzance, the only son of a widowed mother. Le Grice was ordained in 1798 and married Mrs. Nicholls in 1799. Young Nicholls died in 1815 and Mrs. Le Grice in 1821, when Le Grice became sole owner of the Trereife property. He was incumbent of St. Mary's, Penzance, for some years. Le Grice was a witty, rebellious character, but he never fulfilled the promise of his early days. It has been conjectured that his skill in punning awakened Lamb's ambition in that direction. Le Grice saw Lamb next in 1834, at the Bell at Edmonton. His recollections of Lamb were included by Talfourd in the Memorials, and his recollections of Coleridge were printed in the Gentleman's Magazine, December, 1834. I know nothing of Miss Hunt.
Of Lamb's confinement in a madhouse we know no more than is here told. It is conjectured that the "other person" to whom Lamb refers a few lines later was Ann Simmons, a girl at Widford for whom he had an attachment that had been discouraged, if not forbidden, by her friends. This is the only attack of the kind that Lamb is known to have suffered. He once told Coleridge that during his illness he had sometimes believed himself to be Young Norval in Home's "Douglas."
The poem in blank verse was, we learn in a subsequent letter, "The Grandame," or possibly an autobiographical work of which "The Grandame" is the only portion that survived.
White was James White (1775-1820), an old Christ's Hospitaller and a friend and almost exact contemporary of Lamb. Lamb, who first kindled his enthusiasm for Shakespeare, was, I think, to some extent involved in the Original Letters, &c., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends, which appeared in 1796. The dedication—to Master Samuel Irelaunde, meaning William Henry Ireland (who sometimes took his father's name Samuel), the forger of the pretended Shakespearian play "Vortigern," produced at Drury Lane earlier in the year—is quite in Lamb's manner. White's immortality, however, rests not upon this book, but upon his portrait in the Elia essay on "Chimney-Sweepers."
The sonnet "To my Sister" was printed, with slight alterations, by Lamb in Coleridge's Poems, second edition, 1797, and again in Lamb's Works, 1818.
Coleridge's Condones ad Populum; or, Addresses to the People, had been published at Bristol in November, 1795.]
LETTER 2
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
[Probably begun either on Tuesday, May 24, or Tuesday, May 31, 1796.
Postmark? June 1.]