Chapter 139

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

(_Fragment_)

Were my own feelings consulted I should print it verbatim, but I won't hoax you, else I love a Lye. My biography, parentage, place of birth, is a strange mistake, part founded on some nonsense I wrote about Elia, and was true of him, the real Elia, whose name I took.... C.L. was born in Crown Office Row, Inner Temple in 1775. Admitted into Christs Hospital, 1782, where he was contemporary with T.F.M. [Thomas Fanshawe Middleton], afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, and with S.T.C. with the last of these two eminent scholars he has enjoyed an intimacy through life. On quitting this foundation he became a junior clerk in the South Sea House under his Elder Brother who died accountant there some years since.... I am not the author of the Opium Eater, &c.

[I have not succeeded in finding the article in question.]