"Flocci." See note on page II.
"The Young Ass," early versions, ended thus:—
Soothe to rest
The tumult of some Scoundrel Monarch's breast.
Coleridge changed the last line to—
The aching of pale Fashion's vacant breast.
Coleridge had asserted, in a 1796 note, that Rogers had taken the story of Florio in the Pleasures of Memory from Michael Bruce's Loch Leven (not Loch Lomond). In the 1797 edition another note made apology for the mistake.
Cowper's "Lines on the Receipt of my Mother's Picture out of Norfolk" had been written in the spring of 1790. It is interesting to find Lamb reading them just now, for his own Blank Verse poems, shortly to be written, have much in common with Cowper's verses, not only in manner but in matter.]
LETTER 23
CHARLES LAMB TO S. T. COLERIDGE
Feb. 13th, 1797.