In the late Mr. Charles Lamb's
Works
published in 1818, there is an account of the school, entitled
Recollections of Christ's Hospital
. In 1823 there is a second essay on the same subject by Lamb, under the assumed title of "Elia," — Elia supposed to be intimate with Lamb and Coleridge. This second account, entitled
Christ's Hospital five-and-thirty years ago
, gave umbrage to some of the "Blues," as they termed themselves, as differing so much from the first in full praise of this valuable foundation, and particularly as a school from which he had benefited so much.
In the preface to the second series, Elia says,
"What he (Elia) tells of himself is often true only (historically) of another; when under the first person he shadows forth the forlorn state of a country boy placed at a London school far from his friends and connexions,"
which is in direct opposition to Lamb's own early history. The second account, under the personification of Elia, is drawn from the painful recollections and sufferings of Coleridge while at school, which I have often heard him relate.