At this time Lamb contributed (generally facetiae) to various newspapers, now forgotten. One of them, it was said jocosely, had "two and twenty readers, including the printer, the pressman, and the devil." But he was still very poor; so poor that Coleridge offered to supply him with prose translations from the German, in order that he might versify them for the "Morning Post," and thus obtain a little money. In one of his letters Lamb says, "If I got or could but get fifty pounds a year only, in addition to what I have, I should live in affluence." About the time that he is writing this, he is recommending Chapman's "Homer" to Coleridge; is refusing to admit Coleridge's _bona fide_ debt to himself of fifteen pounds; is composing Latin letters; and in other respects deporting himself like a "gentleman who lives at home at ease;" not like a poor clerk, obliged to husband his small means, and to deny himself the cheap luxury of books that he had long coveted. "Do you remember" (his sister says to him, in the Essay on "Old China") "the brown suit that grew so threadbare, all because of that folio of Beaumont and Fletcher that you dragged home late at night from Barker's, in Covent Garden; when you set off near ten o'clock, on Saturday night, from Islington, fearing you should be too late; and when you lugged it home, wishing it was twice as cumbersome," &c. These realities of poverty, very imperfectly covered over by words of fiction, are very touching. It is deeply interesting, that Essay, where the rare enjoyments of a poor scholar are brought into contrast and relief with the indifference that grows upon him when his increased income enables him to acquire any objects he pleases. Those things are no longer distinguished as "enjoyments" which are not purchased by a sacrifice. "A purchase is but a purchase now. Formerly it used to be a triumph. A thing was worth buying when we felt the money that we paid for it."