The message of Coleridge, and the questions in reply, occur in 1798; and
in May, 1800, there is a letter from Lamb to Coleridge, and subsequently
two others, in the same year, all couched in the old customary, friendly
tone. In addition to this, Charles Lamb, many years afterwards, said that
there had been an uninterrupted friendship of fifty years between them. In
one letter of Lamb's, indeed (17th March, 1800), it appears that his early
notions of Coleridge being a "very good man" had been traversed by some
doubts; but these "foolish impressions" were short-lived, and did not
apparently form any check to the continuance of their life-long
friendship.
It is clear that Lamb's judgment was at this time becoming independent. In
one of his letters to Coleridge, when comparing his friend's merits with
those of Southey, he says, "Southey has no pretensions to vie with you in
the sublime of poetry, but he tells a plain story better." Even to Southey
he is equally candid. Writing to him on the subject of a volume of poems
which he had lately published, he remarks, "The Rose is the only insipid
poem in the volume; it has neither thorns nor sweetness."
In 1798 or 1799, Lamb contributed to the Annual Anthology (which Mr.
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