Difficulties

Abstract

Bereft as he was of both Ann and Coleridge, Lamb now endured one of the dreariest periods of his life — dreary because of the inconsequence of everything, the absence of nearly everything which had given his existence point.

You came to Town, & I saw you at a time when your heart was yet bleeding with recent wounds. Like yourself, I was sore galled with disappointed Hope …. When I read in your little volume … I think I hear you again. I image to myself the little smoky room at the Salutation & Cat, where we have sat together thro’ the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with Poesy. When you left London I felt a dismal void in my heart, I found myself cut off at one & the same time from two most dear to me … Lamb to Coleridge, Thursday, 9 June 1796 (M, i, 18)