"I would not go back to my prison," he said to a friend, "ten years longer, for ten thousand pounds." He also wrote in the same ecstatic mood to Bernard Barton: "I have scarce steadiness of head to compose a letter," he said; "I am free! free as air! I will live another fifty years....
Would I could sell you some of my leisure! Positively the best thing a man can do is--Nothing; and next to that, perhaps, Good Works." Two years--two long and tedious years passed; and Charles Lamb's feelings had undergone an entire change.

He now discovered that official, even humdrum work--"the appointed round, the daily task"-- had been good for him, though he knew it not.

Time had formerly been his friend; it had now become his enemy.

To Bernard Barton he again wrote: "I assure you, NO work is worse than overwork; the mind preys on itself--the most unwholesome of food.

I have ceased to care for almost anything....