Lamb sent the first draft of this sonnet to Coleridge in 1796, saying that it was composed "during a walk down into Hertfordshire early in last Summer." "The last line," he adds, "is a copy of Bowles's 'to the green hamlet in the peaceful plain.' Your ears are not so very fastidious--many people would not like words so prosaic and familiar in a sonnet as Islington and Hertfordshire." We must take Lamb's word for it; but the late W.J. Craig found for the last line a nearer parallel than Bowles'. In William Vallans' "Tale of the Two Swannes" (1590), which is quoted in Leland's Itinerary, Hearne's edition, is the phrase: "The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire." Lamb quotes his own line in the _Elia_ essay "My Relations." This sonnet is perhaps the only occasion on which Lamb, even in play, wrote anything against his beloved city. It may be noted here that this was Lamb's last contribution to the _Monthly Magazine_, which had printed in the preceding number, November, 1797, Coleridge's satirical sonnets, signed Nehemiah Higginbottom, in which Lamb and Lloyd were ridiculed, and which had perhaps some bearing on the coolness that for a while was to subsist between Coleridge and Lamb (see _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_, 1898, pages 44-47). Page 16. _To the Poet Cowper_. The _Monthly Magazine_, December, 1796. Signed C. Lamb. Lamb wrote these lines certainly as early as July, 1796, for he sends them to Coleridge on the 6th of that month, adding:-- "I fear you will not accord entirely with my sentiments of Cowper, as _exprest_ above, (perhaps scarcely just), but the poor Gentleman has just recovered from his Lunacies, and that begets pity, and pity love, and love admiration, and then it goes hard with People but they lie!" Lamb admired Cowper greatly in those days--particularly his "Crazy Kate" ("Task," Book I., 534-556). "I have been reading 'The Task' with fresh delight," he says on December 5, 1796. "I am glad you love Cowper. I could forgive a man for not enjoying Milton, but I would not call that man my friend, who should be offended with the 'divine chit-chat of Cowper.'" And again a little later, "I do so love him." Page 17. _Lines addressed, from London, to Sara and S.T.C. at Bristol, in the Summer of 1796._ _The Monthly Magazine,_ January, 1797. Signed Charles Lamb. Lamb sent the lines in their original state to Coleridge in the letter of July 5, 1796, immediately before the words "_Let us prose,_" at the head of that document as it is now preserved.