...temporary restraint (" the six weeks that finished last year," he writes to Coleridge, in May 1796, " your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a...rational now, and don't bite any one. But mad I was ") ; then, in September 1796, his sister suddenly went out of her mind, stabbed her mother to the heart,...

...that finished last year and began this your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton — I am got somewhat rational now, and...imagination played with me, enough to make a volume if all told. My Sonnets I have extended to the number of nine since I saw you, and will some day communicate...

...which is 'the sorest malady of all.' " Lamb himself, during the preceding year, had spent six weeks in "a madhouse at Hoxton. I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite anyone." (See Lamb's earliest known letter to Coleridge.) "Vision of Repentance" is written in Coleridge's...

...— My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and began this, your very humble servant spent very agreeably...got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. The fit appears never to have returned; but something of wildness in Lamb's eye and in his wit still...

...therefrom: My life has been somewnat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and began this, your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a madhouse at Hoxton. I am somewhat rational now and don't bite anyone. But mad 1 was. And many a vagary my imagination played...

...six weeks that finished last year and began this, your very humble servant spent very agreeably iu a madhouse, at Hoxton. I am got somewhat, rational now. and don't bite anyone. But mad I was; andi many a vagary my imagination played with me, enough to make a volume, if...

...universe. "My life has been somewhat diversified of late. The six weeks that finished last year and began this, your very humble servant spent very agreeably...with me, enough to make a volume, if all were told." 2 Again, "At some future time I will amuse you with an account ... of the strange turn my frenzy took....

...period of his life. First he had been confined in a mental hospital since, as he wrote to Coleridge, 'mad I was — and many a vagary my imagination played with me, enough to make a volume if all told',21 while about half a year later his sister killed his mother in a fit of insanity. Besides,...

...would."3 Lamb fears the lyric obligation to pour out his innermost feelings, so he mutes his focus: "mad I was — and many a vagary my imagination played with me, enough to make a volume if all told" (1:2). But "all" cannot be told; instead of that "volume," he presents Coleridge with an imagistically...

...delusions that he later described to his former schoolmate and close friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "But mad I was — and many a vagary my imagination played with me, enough to make a volume if all told. . . . For while it lasted I had many many hours of pure happiness. Dream not, Coleridge, of having...