Prologue to Sheridan Knowles' Comedy, "The Wife" 146 372 Epilogue to Sheridan Knowles' Comedy, "The Wife" 147 372 John Woodvil 149 372 The Witch 199 392 Mr. H------ 202 392 The Pawnbroker's Daughter 238 397 The Wife's Trial 273 --- Poems in the Notes:-- Lines to Dorothy Wordsworth. By Mary Lamb 328 Lines on Lamb's Want of Ear. By Mary Lamb 345 A Lady's Sapphic. By Mary Lamb (?) 356 An English Sapphic. By Charles Lamb (?) 357 Two Epigrams. By Charles Lamb (?) 359 The Poetical Cask. By Charles Lamb (?) 363 NOTES 307 INDEX 399 INDEX OF FIRST LINES 409 FRONTISPIECE CHARLES LAMB (AGE 23) From the Drawing by Robert Hancock, now in the National Portrait Gallery. DEDICATION (1818) TO S.T. COLERIDGE, ESQ. My Dear Coleridge, You will smile to see the slender labors of your friend designated by the title of _Works_; but such was the wish of the gentlemen who have kindly undertaken the trouble of collecting them, and from their judgment could be no appeal. It would be a kind of disloyalty to offer to any one but yourself a volume containing the _early pieces_, which were first published among your poems, and were fairly derivatives from you and them. My friend Lloyd and myself came into our first battle (authorship is a sort of warfare) under cover of the greater Ajax. How this association, which shall always be a dear and proud recollection to me, came to be broken, --who snapped the three-fold cord,--whether yourself (but I know that was not the case) grew ashamed of your former companions,--or whether (which is by much the more probable) some ungracious bookseller was author of the separation,--I cannot tell;--but wanting the support of your friendly elm, (I speak for myself,) my vine has, since that time, put forth few or no fruits; the sap (if ever it had any) has become, in a manner, dried up and extinct; and you will find your old associate, in his second volume, dwindled into prose and _criticism_. Am I right in assuming this as the cause? or is it that, as years come upon us, (except with some more healthy-happy spirits,) Life itself loses much of its Poetry for us? we transcribe but what we read in the great volume of Nature; and, as the characters grow dim, we turn off, and look another way. You yourself write no Christabels, nor Ancient Mariners, now.