"My poor old aunt [Lamb wrote to Coleridge on January 5, 1797], whom you have seen, the kindest, goodest creature to me when I was at school; who used to toddle there to bring me fag [food], when I, school-boy like, only despised her for it, and used to be ashamed to see her come and sit herself down on the old coal-hole steps as you went into the old grammar-school, opend her apron, and bring out her bason with some nice thing she had caused to be saved for me--the good old creature is now lying on her death bed.... She says, poor thing, she is glad to come home to die with me. I was always her favourite." Line 24. _One parent yet is left_. John Lamb, who is described as he was in his prime, as Lovel, in the _Elia_ essay on _"The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,"_ died in 1799. Line 27. _A semblance most forlorn of what he was_. Lamb uses this line as a quotation, slightly altered, in his account of Lovel. * * * * * Page 22. _Written a Year after the Events_. Lamb sent this poem to Coleridge in September, 1797, entitling it "Written a Twelvemonth after the Events," and adding, "Friday next, Coleridge, is the day on which my Mother died." Mrs. Lamb's death, at the hands of her daughter in a moment of frenzy, occurred on September 22, 1796. Lamb added that he wrote the poem at the office with "unusual celerity." "I expect you to like it better than anything of mine; Lloyd does, and I do myself." The version sent to Coleridge differs only in minor and unimportant points from that in _Blank Verse_. The second paragraph of the poem is very similar to a passage which Lamb had written in a letter to Coleridge on November 14, 1796:-- "Oh, my friend! I think sometimes, could I recall the days that are past, which among them should I choose? not those 'merrier days,' not the 'pleasant days of hope,' not 'those wanderings with a fair-hair'd maid,' which I have so often and so feelingly regretted, but the days, Coleridge, of a _mother's_ fondness for her _school-boy_. What would I give to call her back to earth for _one_ day!--on my knees to ask her pardon for all those little asperities of temper which, from time to time, have given her gentle spirit pain!--and the day, my friend, I trust, will come. There will be 'time enough' for kind offices of love, if 'Heaven's eternal year' be ours. Here-after, her meek spirit shall not reproach me." In the last paragraph of the poem is a hint of "The Old Familiar Faces," that was to follow it in the course of a few months. Lines 52, 53. _And one, above the rest_. Probably Coleridge is meant. Page 24. _Written soon after the Preceding Poem_.