Do you remember once speaking with approbation
of a book called _Mrs. Leicester's School_, which you said you had
met with, and you wondered by whom it was written? I was reading the
other day a lately published collection of the _Letters of Charles
Lamb_, edited by Serjeant Talfourd, where I found it mentioned that
_Mrs. Leicester's School_ was the first production of Lamb and his
sister. These letters are themselves singularly interesting; they
have hitherto been suppressed in all previous collections of Lamb's
works and relics, on account of the frequent allusions they contain
to the unhappy malady of Miss Lamb, and a frightful incident which
darkened her earlier years. She was, it appears, a woman of the
sweetest disposition, and, in her normal state, of the highest and
clearest intellect, but afflicted with periodical insanity which came
on once a year, or oftener. To her parents she was a most tender and
dutiful daughter, nursing them in their old age, when one was
physically and the other mentally infirm, with unremitting care, and
at the same time toiling to add something by needlework to the
slender resources of the family. A succession of laborious days and
sleepless nights brought on a frenzy fit, in which she had the
miserable misfortune to kill her own mother.
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