Charles and Mary Lamb wrote their _Poetry for Children_[196] as a task. It was probably suggested by Mrs. Godwin, anxious to rival the publishers of _Original Poems_. In a letter to Coleridge (June, 1809), Lamb says: “Our little poems are but humble, but they have no name. You must read them, remembering they were task-work; and perhaps you will admire the number of subjects, all of children, picked out by an old Batchelor and an old Maid. Many parents would not have found so many.”