This little holiday
(of a fortnight) seems to have converted the acquaintanceship between
Southey and Lamb into something like intimacy. He then paid another visit
(which he had long meditated) to Coleridge, who was residing at Stowey.
It must have been shortly after this first visit (for Lamb went again to
Stowey, and met Wordsworth there in 1801) that Coleridge undertook the
office of minister to a Unitarian congregation at Shrewsbury, and preached
there, as detailed by Hazlitt in the manner already set forth. In 1798 he
took his departure for Germany, and this led to a familiar correspondence
between Lamb and Southey. The opening of Lamb's humor may probably be
referred to this friendship with a congenial humorist, and one, like
himself, taking a strong interest in worldly matters. Coleridge, between
whom and Lamb there was not much similarity of feeling, beyond their
common love for poetry and religious writings, was absent, and Lamb was
enticed by the kindred spirit of Southey into the accessible regions of
humor. These two friends never arrived at that close friendship which had
been forming between Coleridge and Lamb ever since their school-days at
Christ's Hospital.
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