This book was published by Cottle, of Bristol, in 1796. Lamb contributed four poems, which were thus referred to by Coleridge in the Preface: "The Effusions signed C.L. were written by Mr. CHARLES LAMB, of the India House--independently of the signature their superior merit would have sufficiently distinguished them." Lamb reprinted the first only once, in 1797, in the second edition of Coleridge's _Poems_, the remaining three again in his _Works_ in 1818. I have followed in the body of this volume the text of these later appearances, the original form of the sonnets being relegated to the notes. Page 4. _As when a child on some long winter's night._ Some mystery attaches to the authorship of this sonnet. On December 1, 1794, Coleridge wrote to the editor of the _Morning Chronicle_ saying that he proposed to send a series of sonnets ("as it is the fashion to call them") addressed to eminent contemporaries; and he enclosed one to Mr. Erskine. The editor, with almost Chinese politeness, inserted beneath the sonnet this note: "Our elegant Correspondent will highly gratify every reader of taste by the continuance of his exquisitely beautiful productions." The series continued with Burke, Priestley, Lafayette, Kosciusko, Chatham, Bowles, and, on December 29, 1794, Mrs. Siddons--the sonnet here printed--all signed S.T.C. But the next appearance of the sonnet was as an effusion by Lamb in Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_, 1796, signed C.L.; and its next in the _Poems_, 1797, among Lamb's contributions. In 1803, however, we find it in Coleridge's _Poems_, third edition, with no reference to Lamb whatever. This probably means that Lamb and Coleridge had written it together, that Coleridge's original share had been the greater, and that Lamb and he had come to an arrangement by which Coleridge was to be considered the sole author; for Lamb did not reprint it in 1818 with his other early verse. Writing in 1796 to Coleridge concerning his treatment of other of Lamb's sonnets, Lamb says: "That to Mrs. Siddons, now, you were welcome to improve, if it had been worth it; but I say unto you again, Coleridge, spare my ewe lambs." Such a distinction drawn between the sonnet to Mrs. Siddons and the others supports the belief that Lamb had not for it a deeply parental feeling. This was not the only occasion on which Lamb and Coleridge wrote a sonnet in partnership. Writing to Southey in December, 1794, Coleridge says: "Of the following sonnet, the four _last_ lines were written by Lamb, a man of uncommon genius...." SONNET