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[Illustration: Charles Lamb (aged 23)
From a drawing by Robert Hancock]
The earliest poem in this volume bears the date 1794, when Lamb wasnineteen, the latest 1834, the year of his death; so that it covers aneven longer period of his life than Vol. I.—the "Miscellaneous Prose."The chronological order which was strictly observed in that volume hasbeen only partly observed in the following pages—since it seemed betterto keep the plays together and to make a separate section of Lamb'sepigrams. These, therefore, will be found to be outside the generalscheme. Such of Lamb's later poems as he did not himself collect involume form will also be found to be out of their chronologicalposition, partly because it has seemed to me best to give prominence tothose verses which Lamb himself reprinted, and partly because there isoften no indication of the year in which the poem was written.
Another difficulty has been the frequency with which Lamb reprinted someof his earlier poetry. The text of many of his earliest and best poemswas not fixed until 1818, twenty years or so after their composition. Ithad to be decided whether to print these poems in their true order asthey were first published—in Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects,1796; in Charles Lloyd's ems on the Death of Priscilla Farmer, 1796;in Coleridge's Poems, second edition, 1797; in Blank Verse byCharles Lloyd and Charles Lamb, 1798; and in John Woodvil, 1802—withall their early readings; or whether to disregard chronologicalsequence, and wait until the time of the Works—1818—had come, andprint them all together then. I decided, in the interests of theirbiographical value, to print them in the order as they first appeared,particularly as Crabb Robinson tells us that Lamb once said of thearrangement of a poet's works: "There is only one good order—and thatis the order in which they were written—that is a history of the poet'smind." It then had to be decided whether to print them in their firstshape, which, unless I repeated them later, would mean the relegation ofLamb's final text to the Notes, or to print them, at the expense of aslight infringement upon the chronological scheme, in their final 1818state, and relegate all earlier readings to the Notes. After muchdeliberation I decided that to print them in their final 1818 state wasbest, and this therefore I did in the large edition of 1903, to whichthe student is referred for all variorum readings, fuller notes and manyillustrations, and have repeated here. In order, however, that thescheme of Lamb's 1818 edition of his Works might be preserved, I haveindicated in the text the position in the Works occupied by all thepoems that in the present volume have been printed earlier.
The chronological order, in so far as it has been followed, emphasisesthe dividing line between Lamb's poetry and his verse. As he grew olderhis poetry, for the most part, passed into his prose. His best andtruest poems, with few exceptions, belong to the years before, say,1805, when he was thirty. After this, following a long interval ofsilence, came the brief satirical outburst of 1812, in The Examiner,and