He knew Coleridge and Leigh Hunt well from schooldays. He swore to look after his sister Mary, to spare her from life imprisonment for matricide (while clearly unbalanced). He met his life-long friend Wordsworth while on holiday with Coleridge. Hazlitt was among those who met weekly at Lamb’s for discussion, cribbage and whist. Shelley, Leigh Hunt and Keats were among his other London friends, united through radicalism. He got de Quincey’s ‘Confessions of an English Opium Eater’ published, while Godwin published the Lambs’ ‘Tales from Shakespeare.’ Haydon included his face in the painting ‘Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem.’