Chapter XI

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Page 172, line 12 from foot. _It was hit or miss with him_. Canon Ainger has pointed out that Lamb's description of himself in company is corroborated by Hazlitt in his essay "On Coffee-House Politicians":--

I will, however, admit that the said Elia is the worst company in the world in bad company, if it be granted me that in good company he is nearly the best that can be. He is one of those of whom it may be said, _Tell me your company, and I'll tell you your manners_. He is the creature of sympathy, and makes good whatever opinion you seem to entertain of him. He cannot outgo the apprehensions of the circle; and invariably acts up or down to the point of refinement or vulgarity at which they pitch him. He appears to take a pleasure in exaggerating the prejudices of strangers against him; a pride in confirming the prepossessions of friends. In whatever scale of intellect he is placed, he is as lively or as stupid as the rest can be for their lives. If you think him odd and ridiculous, he becomes more and more so every minute, _à la folie_, till he is a wonder gazed at by all--set him against a good wit and a ready apprehension, and he brightens more and more ...

P.G. Patmore's testimony is also corroborative:--

To those who did not know him, or, knowing, did not or could not appreciate him, Lamb often passed for something between an imbecile, a brute, and a buffoon; and the first impression he made on ordinary people was always unfavourable--sometimes to a violent and repulsive degree.

Page 174, line 3. _Some of his writings_. In the _London Magazine_ the essay did not end here. It continued:--

"He left property behind him. Of course, the little that is left (chiefly in India bonds) devolves upon his cousin Bridget. A few critical dissertations were found in his escritoire, which have been handed over to the Editor of this Magazine, in which it is to be hoped they will shortly appear, retaining his accustomed signature.

"He has himself not obscurely hinted that his employment lay in a public office. The gentlemen in the Export department of the East India House will forgive me, if I acknowledge the readiness with which they assisted me in the retrieval of his few manuscripts. They pointed out in a most obliging manner the desk at which he had been planted for forty years; showed me ponderous tomes of figures, in his own remarkably neat hand, which, more properly than his few printed tracts, might be called his 'Works.' They seemed affectionate to his memory, and universally commended his expertness in book-keeping. It seems he was the inventor of some ledger, which should combine the precision and certainty of the Italian double entry (I think they called it) with the brevity and facility of some newer German system--but I am not able to appreciate the worth of the discovery. I have often heard him express a warm regard for his associates in office, and how fortunate he considered himself in having his lot thrown in amongst them. There is more sense, more discourse, more shrewdness, and even talent, among these clerks (he would say) than in twice the number of authors by profession that I have conversed with. He would brighten up sometimes upon the 'old days of the India House,' when he consorted with Woodroffe, and Wissett, and Peter Corbet (a descendant and worthy representative, bating the point of sanctity, of old facetious Bishop Corbet), and Hoole who translated Tasso, and Bartlemy Brown whose father (God assoil him therefore) modernised Walton--and sly warm-hearted old Jack Cole (King Cole they called him in those days), and Campe, and Fombelle--and a world of choice spirits, more than I can remember to name, who associated in those days with Jack Burrell (the _bon vivant_ of the South Sea House), and little Eyton (said to be a _facsimile_ of Pope--he was a miniature of a gentleman) that was cashier under him, and Dan Voight of the Custom House that left the famous library.

"Well, Elia is gone--for aught I know, to be reunited with them--and these poor traces of his pen are all we have to show for it. How little survives of the wordiest authors! Of all they said or did in their lifetime, a few glittering words only! His Essays found some favourers, as they appeared separately; they shuffled their way in the crowd well enough singly; how they will _read_, now they are brought together, is a question for the publishers, who have thus ventured to draw out into one piece his 'weaved-up follies.'

"PHIL-ELIA."

This passage calls for some remark. Cousin Bridget was, of course, Mary Lamb.--Lamb repeated the joke about his _Works_ in his "Autobiography" (see Vol. I.) and in "The Superannuated Man."--Some record of certain of the old clerks mentioned by Lamb still remains; but I can find nothing of the others. Whether or not Peter Corbet really derived from the Bishop we do not know, but the facetious Bishop Corbet was Richard Corbet (1582-1635), Bishop of Oxford and Norwich, whose conviviality was famous and who wrote the "Fairies' Farewell." John Hoole (1727-1803), who translated Tasso and wrote the life of Scott of Amwell and a number of other works, was principal auditor at the end of his time at the India House. He retired about 1785, when Lamb was ten years old. Writing to Coleridge on January 5, 1797, Lamb speaks of Hoole as "the great boast and ornament of the India House," and says that he found Tasso, in Hoole's translation, "more vapid than smallest small beer sun-vinegared." The moderniser of Walton would be Moses Browne (1704-1787), whose edition of _The Complete Angler_, 1750, was undertaken at the suggestion of Dr. Johnson.

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Page 174. BLAKESMOOR IN H----SHIRE

_London Magazine_, September, 1824.

With this essay Lamb made his reappearance in the magazine, after eight months' absence.

By Blakesmoor Lamb meant Blakesware, the manor-house near Widford, in Hertfordshire, where his grandmother, Mary Field, had been housekeeper for many years. Compare the essay "Dream-Children."

Blakesware, which was built by Sir Francis Leventhorpe about 1640, became the property of the Plumers in 1683, being then purchased by John Plumer, of New Windsor, who died in 1718. It descended to William Plumer, M.P. for Yarmouth, in the Isle of Wight, and afterwards for Hertfordshire, who died in 1767, and was presumably Mrs. Field's first employer. His widow and the younger children remained at Blakesware until Mrs. Plumer's death in 1778, but the eldest son, William Plumer, moved at once to Gilston, a few miles east of Blakesware, a mansion which for a long time was confused with Blakesware by commentators on Lamb. This William Plumer, who was M.P. for Lewes, for Hertfordshire, and finally for Higham Ferrers, and a governor of Christ's Hospital, kept up Blakesware after his mother's death in 1778 (when Lamb was three) exactly as before, but it remained empty save for Mrs. Field and the servants under her. Mrs. Field became thus practically mistress of it, as Lamb says in "Dream-Children." Hence the increased happiness of her grandchildren when they visited her. Mrs. Field died in 1792, when Lamb was seventeen. William Plumer died in 1822, aged eighty-six, having apparently arranged with his widow, who continued at Gilston, that Blakesware should be pulled down--a work of demolition which at once was begun. This lady, _née_ Jane Hamilton, afterwards married a Mr. Lewin, and then, in 1828, Robert Ward (1765-1846), author of _Tremaine_ and other novels, who took the name of Plumer-Ward, and may be read of, together with curious details of Gilston House, in P.G. Patmore's _My Friends and Acquaintances_.

Nothing now remains but a few mounds, beneath which are bricks and rubble. The present house is a quarter of a mile behind the old one, high on the hill. In Lamb's day this hillside was known as the Wilderness, and where now is turf were formal walks with clipped yew hedges and here and there a statue. The stream of which he speaks is the Ashe, running close by the walls of the old house. Standing there now, among the trees which mark its site, it is easy to reconstruct the past as described in the essay.

The Twelve Cæsars, the tapestry and other more notable possessions of Blakesware, although moved to Gilston on the demolition of Blakesware, are there no longer, and their present destination is a mystery. Gilston was pulled down in 1853, following upon a sale by auction, when all its treasures were dispersed. Some, I have discovered, were bought by the enterprising tenant of the old Rye House Inn at Broxbourne, but absolute identification of anything now seems impossible.

Blakesware is again described in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, in Mary Lamb's story of "The Young Mahometan." There the Twelve Cæsars are spoken of as hanging on the wall, as if they were medallions; but Mr. E.S. Bowlby tells me that he perfectly remembers the Twelve Cæsars at Gilston, about 1850, as busts, just as Lamb says. In "Rosamund Gray" (see Vol. I.) Lamb describes the Blakesware wilderness. See also notes to "The Last Peach," Vol. I., to "Dream-Children" in this volume, and to "Going or Gone," Vol. IV.

Lamb has other references to Blakesware and the irrevocability of his happiness there as a child, in his letters. Writing to Southey on October 31, 1799, he says:--"Dear Southey,--I have but just got your letter, being returned from Herts, where I have passed a few red-letter days with much pleasure. I would describe the county to you, as you have done by Devonshire; but alas! I am a poor pen at that same. I could tell you of an old house with a tapestry bedroom, the 'Judgment of Solomon' composing one pannel, and 'Actæon spying Diana naked' the other. I could tell of an old marble hall, with Hogarth's prints, and the Roman Cæsars in marble hung round. I could tell of a _wilderness_, and of a village church, and where the bones of my honoured grandam lie; but there are feelings which refuse to be translated, sulky aborigines, which will not be naturalised in another soil. Of this nature are old family faces, and scenes of infancy."

And again, to Bernard Barton, in August, 1827:--"You have well described your old-fashioned grand paternall Hall. Is it not odd that every one's earliest recollections are of some such place. I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the 'London'). Nothing fills a child's mind like a large old Mansion ... better if un- or partially-occupied; peopled with the spirits of deceased members of the County and Justices of the Quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled solitude of one, with my feelings at 7 years old!

"Those marble busts of the Emperors, they seem'd as if they were to stand for ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in that old Marble Hall, and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old Dwelling and its princely gardens. I feel like a grasshopper that chirping about the grounds escaped his scythe only by my littleness. Ev'n now he is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps. Well!"

Writing to Barton in August, 1824, concerning the present essay, Lamb describes it as a "futile effort ... 'wrung from me with slow pain'."

Page 175, line 15 from foot. _Mrs. Battle_. There was a haunted room at Blakesware, but the suggestion that the famous Mrs. Battle died in it was probably due to a sudden whimsical impulse. Lamb states in "Dream-Children" that Mrs. Field occupied this room.

Page 177, line 22. _The hills of Lincoln_. See Lamb's sonnet "On the Family Name," Vol. IV. Lamb's father came from Lincoln.

Page 177, line 11 from foot. _Those old W----s_. Lamb thus disguised the name of Plumer. He could not have meant Wards, for Robert Ward did not marry William Plumer's widow till four years after this essay was printed.

Page 178, line 2. _My Alice_. See notes to "Dream-Children."

Page 178, line 2. _Mildred Elia, I take it_. Alter these words, in the _London Magazine_, came this passage:--

"From her, and from my passion for her--for I first learned love from a picture--Bridget took the hint of those pretty whimsical lines, which thou mayst see, if haply thou hast never seen them, Reader, in the margin.[1] But my Mildred grew not old, like the imaginery Helen."

This ballad, written in gentle ridicule of Lamb's affection for the Blakesware portrait, and Mary Lamb's first known poem, was printed in the _John Woodvil_ volume, 1802, and in the _Works_, 1818.

[Footnote 1: "High-born Helen, round your dwelling, These twenty years I've paced in vain: Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty Hath been to glory in his pain.

"High-born Helen, proudly telling Stories of thy cold disdain; I starve, I die, now you comply, And I no longer can complain.

"These twenty years I've lived on tears, Dwelling for ever on a frown; On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread; I perish now you kind are grown.

"Can I, who loved ray beloved But for the scorn 'was in her eye,' Can I be moved for my beloved, When she returns me sigh for sigh?

"In stately pride, by my bedside, High-born Helen's portrait hung; Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays Are nightly to the portrait sung.

"To that I weep, nor ever sleep, Complaining all night long to her.-- Helen, grown old, no longer cold, Said--'you to all men I prefer.'"]

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Page 178. POOR RELATIONS.

_London Magazine_, May, 1823.

Page 179, line 10. _A pound of sweet._ After these words, in the _London Magazine_, came one more descriptive clause--"the bore _par excellence_."

Page 181, line 4, _Richard Amlet, Esq._ In "The Confederacy" by Sir John Vanbrugh--a favourite part of John Palmer's (see the essay "On Some of the Old Actors").

Page 181, line 16. _Poor W----_. In the Key Lamb identifies W---- with Favell, who "left Cambridge because he was asham'd of his father, who was a house-painter there." Favell has already been mentioned in the essay on "Christ's Hospital."

Page 183, line 22. _At Lincoln._ The Lambs, as we have seen, came from Lincolnshire. The old feud between the Above and Below Boys seems now to have abated, but a social gulf between the two divisions of the city remains.

Page 184, line 11 from foot. _John Billet_. Probably not the real name. Lamb gives the innkeeper at Widford, in "Rosamund Gray," the name of Billet, when it was really Clemitson.

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Page 185. STAGE ILLUSION.

_London Magazine_, August, 1825, where it was entitled "Imperfect Dramatic Illusion."

This was, I think, Lamb's last contribution to the _London_, which had been growing steadily heavier and less hospitable to gaiety. Some one, however, contributed to it from time to time papers more or less in the Elian manner. There had been one in July, 1825, on the Widow Fairlop, a lady akin to "The Gentle Giantess." In September, 1825, was an essay entitled "The Sorrows of ** ***" (an ass), which might, both from style and sympathy, be almost Lamb's; but was, I think, by another hand. And in January, 1826, there was an article on whist, with quotations from Mrs. Battle, deliberately derived from her creator. These and other essays are printed in Mr. Bertram Dobell's _Sidelights on Charles Lamb_, 1903, with interesting comments.

The present essay to some extent continues the subject treated of in "The Artificial Comedy," but it may be taken also as containing some of the matter of the promised continuation of the essay "On the Tragedies of Shakspeare," which was to deal with the comic characters of that dramatist (see Vol. I.).

Page 185, line 15 from foot. _Jack Bannister_. See notes to the essay on "The Old Actors." His greatest parts were not those of cowards; but his Bob Acres was justly famous. Sir Anthony Absolute and Tony Lumpkin were perhaps his chief triumphs. He left the stage in 1815.

Page 186, line 24. _Gatty_. Henry Gattie (1774-1844), famous for old-man parts, notably Monsieur Morbleu in Moncrieffs "Monsieur Tonson." He was also the best Dr. Caius, in "The Merry Wives of Windsor," of his time. He left the stage in 1833, and settled down as a tobacconist and raconteur at Oxford.

Page 186, line 30. _Mr. Emery._ John Emery (1777-1822), the best impersonator of countrymen in his day. Zekiel Homespun in Colman's "Heir at Law" was one of his great parts. Tyke was in Morton's "School of Reform," produced in 1805, and no one has ever played it so well. He also played Caliban with success.

Page 187, line 4 from foot. _A very judicious actor._ This actor I have not identified. Benjamin Wrench (1778-1843) was a dashing comedian, a Wyndham of his day. In "Free and Easy" he played Sir John Freeman.

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Page 188. To THE SHADE OF ELLISTON.

_Englishman's Magazine_, August, 1831, where it formed, with the following essay, one article, under the title "Reminiscences of Elliston."

Robert William Elliston (1774-1831), actor and manager, famous for his stage lovers, both in comedy and tragedy. His Charles Surface was said to be unequalled, and both in Hotspur and Hamlet he was great. His last performance was in June, 1831, a very short time before his death.

Page 189, line 7. _Thin ghosts._ In the _London Magazine_ the passage ran:--

"Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) admire, while with uplifted toe retributive you inflict vengeance incorporeal upon the shadowy rear of obnoxious author, just arrived:--

"'what _seem'd_ his tail The likeness of a kingly kick had on. * * * * * "'Yet soon he heals: for spirits, that live throughout Vital in every part, not as frail man In entrails, head, or heart, liver or veins, Can in the liquid texture mortal wound Receive no more, than can the liquid air, All heart they live, all head, all eye.'"

Page 189, line 11 from foot. _À la Foppington_. In Vanbrugh's "Relapse."

In the _Englishman's Magazine_ the article ended, after "Plaudito, et Valeto," with: "Thy friend upon Earth, though thou did'st connive at his d----n."

The article was signed Mr. H., the point being that Elliston had played Mr. H. at Drury Lane in Lamb's unlucky farce of that name in 1806.

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Page 190. ELLISTONIANA.

See note at the head of "To the Shade of Elliston," above.

Page 190, line 3 of essay. _My first introduction._ This paragraph was a footnote in the _Englishman's Magazine_. Elliston, according to the _Memoirs_ of him by George Raymond, which have Lamb's phrase, "Joyousest of once embodied spirits," for motto, opened a circulating library at Leamington in the name of his sons William and Henry, and served there himself at times.

Possibly Lamb was visiting Charles Chambers at Leamington when he saw Elliston. That he did see him there we know from Raymond's book, where an amusing occurrence is described, illustrating Munden's frugality. It seems that Lamb, Elliston and Munden drove together to Warwick Castle. On returning Munden stopped the carriage just outside Leamington, on the pretext that he had to make a call on an old friend--a regular device, as Elliston explained, to avoid being present at the inn when the hire of the carriage was paid.

Page 191, line 11. _Wrench_. See notes to "The Old Actors." Wrench succeeded Elliston at Bath, and played in the same parts, and with something of the same manner.

Page 191, line 11 from foot. _Appelles ... G.D._ Apelles, painter to Alexander the Great, was said to let no day pass without experimenting with his pencil. G.D. was George Dyer, whom we first met in "Oxford in the Vacation."

Page 192, line 6. _Ranger_. In Hoadley's "Suspicious Husband," one of Elliston's great parts.

Page 192, line 17 from foot. _Cibber_. Colley Cibber (1671-1757), the actor, who was a very vain man, created the part of Foppington in 1697--his first great success.

Page 192, last line. _St. Dunstan's ... punctual giants._ Old St. Dunstan Church, in Fleet Street, had huge figures which struck the hours, and which disappeared with the church, pulled down to make room for the present one some time before 1831. They are mentioned in Emily Barton's story in _Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see Vol. III.). Moxon records that Lamb shed tears when the figures were taken away.

Page 193, line 6. _Drury Lane_. Drury Lane opened, under Elliston's management, on October 4, 1819, with "Wild Oats," in which he played Rover. He left the theatre, a bankrupt, in 1826.

Page 193, line 19. _The ... Olympic._ Lamb is wrong in his dates. Elliston's tenancy of the Olympic preceded his reign at Drury Lane. It was to the Surrey that he retired after the Drury Lane period, producing there Jerrold's "Black-Eyed Susan" in 1829.

Page 193, line 12 from foot. _Sir A---- C----_. Sir Anthony Carlisle (see note to "A Quakers' Meeting").

Page 194, line 7. _A Vestris_. Madame Vestris (1797-1856), the great comédienne, who was one of Elliston's stars at Drury Lane.

Page 195, line 6. _Latinity_. Elliston was buried in St. John's Church, Waterloo Road, and a marble slab with a Latin inscription by Nicholas Torre, his son-in-law, is on the wall. Elliston was the nephew of Dr. Elliston, Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, who sent him to St. Paul's School--not, however, that founded by Colet--but to St. Paul's School, Covent Garden. He was intended for the Church.

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Page 195. DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING.

_London Magazine_, July, 1822, where, at the end, were the words, "To be continued;" but Lamb did not return to the topic.

For some curious reason Lamb passed over this essay when collecting _Elia_ for the press. It was not republished till 1833, in the _Last Essays_.

Page 195, motto. _The Relapse_. The comedy by Sir John Vanbrugh. Lamb liked this quotation. He uses it in his letter about William Wordsworth, junior, to Dorothy Wordsworth, November 25, 1819; and again in his "Reminiscence of Sir Jeffery Dunstan" (see Vol. I.).

Page 195, foot. _I can read any thing which I call a book_. Writing to Wordsworth in August, 1815, Lamb says: "What any man can write, surely I may read."

Page 195, last line. _Pocket Books_. In the _London Magazine_ Lamb added in parenthesis "the literary excepted," the reference being to the _Literary Pocket Book_ which Leigh Hunt brought out annually from 1819 to 1822.

Page 196, line 2. _Hume ... Jenyns_. Hume would be David Hume (1711-1776), the philosopher and historian of England; Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), historian of Rome; William Robertson, D.D. (1721-1793), historian of America, Charles V., Scotland and India; James Beattie (1735-1803), author of "The Minstrel" and a number of essays, who had, however, one recommendation to Lamb, of which Lamb may have been unaware--he loved Vincent Bourne's poems and was one of the first to praise them; and Soame Jenyns (1704-1787), author of _The Art of Dancing_, and the _Inquiry into Evil_ which Johnson reviewed so mercilessly. It is stated in Moore's _Diary_, according to Procter, that Lamb "excluded from his library Robertson, Gibbon and Hume, and made instead a collection of the works of the heroes of _The Dunciad_."

Page 196, line 14. _Population Essay_. That was the day of population essays. Malthus's _Essay on Population_, 1798, had led to a number of replies.

Page 196, line 22. _My ragged veterans_. Crabb Robinson recorded in his diary that Lamb had the "finest collection of shabby books" he ever saw; "such a number of first-rate works in very bad condition is, I think, nowhere to be found." Leigh Hunt stated in his essay on "My Books" in _The Literary Examiner_, July 5, 1823, that Lamb's library had

an handsome contempt for appearance. It looks like what it is, a selection made at precious intervals from the book-stalls;--now a Chaucer at nine and twopence; now a Montaigne or a Sir Thomas Browne at two shillings; now a Jeremy Taylor, a Spinoza; an old English Dramatist, Prior, and Sir Philip Sidney; and the books are "neat as imported." The very perusal of the backs is a "discipline of humanity." There Mr. Southey takes his place again with an old Radical friend: there Jeremy Collier is at peace with Dryden: there the lion, Martin Luther, lies down with the Quaker lamb, Sewel: there Guzman d'Alfarache thinks himself fit company for Sir Charles Grandison, and has his claims admitted. Even the "high fantastical" Duchess of Newcastle, with her laurel on her head, is received with grave honours, and not the less for declining to trouble herself with the constitutions of her maids.

It is in the same essay that Leigh Hunt mentions that he once saw Lamb kiss an old folio--Chapman's Homer--the work he paraphrased for children under the title _The Adventures of Ulysses_.

Page 197, line 15. _Life of the Duke of Newcastle_. Lamb's copy, a folio containing also the "Philosophical Letters," is in America.

Page 197, line 20. _Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton_... I cannot say where are Lamb's copies of Sidney and Fuller; but the British Museum has his Milton, rich in MS. notes, a two-volume edition, 1751. The Taylor, which Lamb acquired in 1798, is the 1678 folio _Sermons_. I cannot say where it now is.

Page 197, line 26. _Shakspeare_. Lamb's Shakespeare was not sold at the sale of his library; only a copy of the _Poems_, 12mo, 1714. His annotated copy of the _Poems_, 1640, is in America. There is a reference to one of Rowe's plates in the essay "My First Play." The Shakespeare gallery engravings were the costly series of illustrations to Shakespeare commissioned by John Boydell (1719-1804), Lord Mayor of London in 1790. The pictures were exhibited in the Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, and the engravings were published in 1802.

After the word "Shakespeare," in the _London Magazine_, came the sentence: "You cannot make a _pet_ book of an author whom everybody reads."

In a letter to Wordsworth, February 1, 1806, Lamb says: "Shakespear is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book." In the same letter he says of binding: "The Law Robe I have ever thought as comely and gentlemanly a garb as a Book would wish to wear."

Page 197, line 7 from foot. _Beaumont and Fletcher._ See note to "The Two Races of Men" for an account of Lamb's copy, now in the British Museum.

Page 197, line 5 from foot. _No sympathy with them._ After these words, in the _London Magazine_, came, "nor with Mr. Gifford's Ben Jonson." This edition by Lamb's old enemy, William Gifford, editor of the _Quarterly_, was published in 1816. Lamb's copy of Ben Jonson was dated 1692, folio. It is now in America, I believe.

Page 197, foot. _The reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy_. This reprint was, I think, published in 1800, in two volumes, marked ninth edition. Lamb's copy was dated 1621, quarto. I do not know where it now is.

Page 198, line 4. _Malone_. This was Edmund Malone (1741-1812), the critic and editor of Shakespeare, who in 1793 persuaded the Vicar of Stratford-on-Avon to whitewash the coloured bust of the poet in the chancel. A _Gentleman's Magazine_ epigrammatist, sharing Lamb's view, wrote:--

Stranger, to whom this monument is shown, Invoke the poet's curse upon Malone; Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays, And daubs his tombstone, as he mars his plays.

Lamb has been less than fair to Malone. To defend his action in the matter of the bust of Shakespeare is impossible, except by saying that he acted in good faith and according to the fashion of his time. But he did great service to the fame of Shakespeare and thus to English literature, and was fearless and shrewd in his denunciation of the impostor Ireland.

Page 198, line 26. _The Fairy Queen_. Lamb's copy was a folio, 1617, 12, 17, 13. Against Canto XI., Stanza 32, he has written: "Dear Venom, this is the stave I wot of. I will maintain it against any in the book."

Page 199, line 14. _Nando's_. A coffee-house in Fleet Street, at the east corner of Inner Temple Lane, and thus at one time close to Lamb's rooms.

Page 199, line 16. "_The Chronicle is in hand, Sir._" In the _London Magazine_ the following paragraph was here inserted:--

"As in these little Diurnals I generally skip the Foreign News, the Debates--and the Politics--I find the Morning Herald by far the most entertaining of them. It is an agreeable miscellany, rather than a newspaper."

The _Morning Herald_, under Alexander Chalmers, had given more attention to social gossip than to affairs of State; but under Thomas Wright it suddenly, about the time of Lamb's essay, became politically serious and left aristocratic matters to the _Morning Post_.

Page 199, line 20. _Town and Country Magazine_. This magazine flourished between 1769 and 1792.

Page 199, line 26. _Poor Tobin_. Possibly John Tobin (1770-1804), the playwright, though I think not. More probably the Tobin mentioned in Lamb's letter to Wordsworth about "Mr. H." in June, 1806 (two years after John Tobin's death), to whom Lamb read the manager's letter concerning the farce. This would be James, John Tobin's brother.

Page 200, line 13. _The five points_. After these words came, in the _London Magazine_, the following paragraph:--

"I was once amused--there is a pleasure in _affecting_ affectation--at the indignation of a crowd that was justling in with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden theatre, to have a sight of Master Betty--then at once in his dawn and his meridian--in Hamlet. I had been invited quite unexpectedly to join a party, whom I met near the door of the playhouse, and I happened to have in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens's Shakspeare, which, the time not admitting of my carrying it home, of course went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure of the doors opening--the _rush_, as they term it--I deliberately held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which the young Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamplight. The clamour became universal. 'The affectation of the fellow,' cried one. 'Look at that gentleman _reading_, papa,' squeaked a young lady, who in her admiration of the novelty almost forgot her fears. I read on. 'He ought to have his book knocked out of his hand,' exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I read on--and, till the time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved, as Saint Antony at his Holy Offices, with the satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins, mopping, and making mouths at him, in the picture, while the good man sits undisturbed at the sight, as if he were sole tenant of the desart.--The individual rabble (I recognised more than one of their ugly faces) had damned a slight piece of mine but a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits should not a second time put me out of countenance."

Master Betty was William Henry West Betty (1791-1874), known as the "Young Roscius," whose Hamlet and Douglas sent playgoers wild in 1804-5-6. Pitt, indeed, once adjourned the House in order that his Hamlet might be witnessed. His most cried-up scenes in "Hamlet" were the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and the fencing scene before the king and his mother. The piece of Lamb's own which had been hissed was, of course, "Mr. H.," produced on December 10, 1806; but very likely he added this reference as a symmetrical afterthought, for he would probably have visited Master Betty much earlier in his career, that phenomenon's first appearance at Covent Garden being two years before the advent of the ill-fated Hogsflesh.

Page 200, line 22. _Martin B----_. Martin Charles Burney, son of Admiral Burney, and a lifelong friend of the Lambs--to whom Lamb dedicated the prose part of his _Works_ in 1818 (see Vol. IV.).

Page 200, line 28. _A quaint poetess_. Mary Lamb. The poem is in _Poetry for Children_, 1809 (see Vol. III. of this edition). In line 17 the word "then" has been inserted by Lamb. The punctuation also differs from that of the _Poetry for Children_.

* * * * *

Page 201. THE OLD _MARGATE HOY_.

_London Magazine_, July, 1823. This, like others of Lamb's essays, was translated into French and published in the _Revue Britannique_ in 1833. It was prefaced by the remark: "L'auteur de cette délicieuse esquisse est Charles Lamb, connu sous le nom d'Eliah."

Page 201, beginning. _I have said so before._ See "Oxford in the Vacation."

Page 201, line 5 of essay. _My beloved Thames._ Lamb describes a riparian holiday at and about Richmond in a letter to Robert Lloyd in 1804.

Page 201, line 8 of essay. _Worthing_... There is no record of the Lambs' sojourn at Worthing or Eastbourne. They were at Brighton in 1817, and Mary Lamb at any rate enjoyed walking on the Downs there; in a letter to Miss Wordsworth of November 21, 1817, she described them as little mountains, _almost as good as_ Westmoreland scenery. They were at Hastings--at 13 Standgate Street--in 1823 (see Lamb's letters to Bernard Barton, July 10, 1823, to Hood, August 10, 1824, and to Dibdin, June, 1826). The only evidence that we have of Lamb knowing Worthing is his "Mr. H.". That play turns upon the name Hogsflesh, afterwards changed to Bacon. The two chief innkeepers at Worthing at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of its prosperity were named Hogsflesh and Bacon, and there was a rhyme concerning them which was well known (see notes to "Mr. H." in Vol. IV.).

Page 201, line 11 of essay. _Many years ago_. A little later Lamb says he was then fifteen. This would make the year 1790. It was probably on this visit to Margate that Lamb conceived the idea of his sonnet, "O, I could laugh," which Coleridge admired so much (see Vol. IV.).

Page 201, line 17 of essay. _Thou old Margate Hoy_. This old sailing-boat gave way to a steam-boat, the _Thames_, some time after 1815. The _Thames_, launched in 1815, was the first true steam-boat the river had seen. The old hoy, or lighter, was probably sloop rigged.

Page 202, foot. _Our enemies_. Lamb refers here to the attacks of _Blackwood's Magazine_ on the Cockneys, among whom he himself had been included. In the _London Magazine_ he had written "unfledged" for "unseasoned."

Page 206, line 14. _Gebir_. _Gebir_, by Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), who was a fortnight older than Lamb, and who afterwards came to know him personally, was published in 1798.

Page 206, line 16. _This detestable Cinque Port_. A letter from Mary Lamb to Randal Norris, concerning this, or another, visit to Hastings, says: "We eat turbot, and we drink smuggled Hollands, and we walk up hill and down hill all day long." Lamb, in a letter to Barton, admitted a benefit: "I abused Hastings, but learned its value."

Page 208, line 5. _Lothbury_. Probably in recollection of Wordsworth's "Reverie of Poor Susan," which Lamb greatly liked.

* * * * *

Page 208. THE CONVALESCENT.

_London Magazine_, July, 1825.

We learn from the _Letters_ that Lamb had a severe nervous breakdown in the early summer of 1825 after liberation from the India House. Indeed, his health was never sound for long together after he became a free man.

* * * * *

Page 212. SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS.

_New Monthly Magazine_, May, 1826, where it appeared as one of the Popular Fallacies under the title, "That great Wit is allied to Madness;" beginning: "So far from this being true, the greatest wits will ever be found to be the sanest writers..." and so forth. Compare the essay "On the Tragedies of Shakespeare," Vol. I. Lamb's thesis is borrowed from Dryden's couplet (in _Absalom and Achitophel_, Part I., lines 163, 164):--

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

Page 213, line 14. _Kent ... Flavius_. Lamb was always greatly impressed by the character of Kent (see his essay on "Hogarth," Vol. I.; his "Table Talk," Vol. I.; and his versions, in the _Tales from Shakespear_, of "King Lear" and "Timon," Vol. III.).

* * * * *

Page 215. CAPTAIN JACKSON.

_London Magazine_, November, 1824.

No one has yet been able to identify Captain Jackson. The suggestion has been made that Randal Norris sat for the picture; but the circumstance that Lamb, in the first edition of the _Last Essays_, included "A Death-Bed," with a differing portrait of Randal Norris therein, is, I think, good evidence against this theory. Perhaps the captain was one of the imaginary characters which Lamb sent out every now and then, as he told Bernard Barton (in the letter of March 20, 1826), "to exercise the ingenuity of his friends;" although his reality seems overpowering.

Apart from his own interest, the captain is noteworthy in constituting, with Ralph Bigod (see page 27), a sketch (possibly unknown to Dickens) for Wilkins Micawber.

Page 217, line 22. _Glover ... Leonidas_. Richard Glover (1712-1785), the poet, author of _Leonidas_, 1737. I cannot find that he ever lived at Westbourne Green.

Page 218, foot. _The old ballad_. The old ballad "Waly, Waly." This was among the poems copied by Lamb into Miss Isola's Extract Book.

Page 219, line 8. _Tibbs, and Bobadil_. Beau Tibbs in Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," and Bobadil in Ben Jonson's "Every Man in His Humour."

* * * * *

Page 219. THE SUPERANNUATED MAN.

_London Magazine_, May, 1825.

Except that Lamb has disguised his real employment, this essay is practically a record of fact. After thirty-three years of service at the East India House he went home "for ever" on Tuesday, March 29, 1825, with a pension of £441, or two-thirds of his regular salary, less a small annual deduction as a provision for his sister. At a Court of Directors held on that day this minute was drawn up: "Resolved that the resignation of Mr. Charles Lamb, of the Accountant General's office, on account of certified ill health, be accepted, and it appearing that he has served the Company faithfully for 33 years, and is now in receipt of an income of £730 per annum, he be allowed a pension of £450 ... to commence from this day." Lamb's letters to Wordsworth, April 6, 1825, to Barton, the same date, and to Miss Hutchinson, a little later, all tell the story. This is how Lamb put it to Barton:--

"DEAR B.B.--My spirits are so tumultuary with the novelty of my recent emancipation, that I have scarce steadiness of hand, much more mind, to compose a letter.

"I am free, B.B.--free as air.

"The little bird that wings the sky Knows no such Liberty!

"I was set free on Tuesday in last week at 4 o'clock.

"I came home for ever!...

"I went and sat among 'em all at my old 33 years desk yester morning; and deuce take me if I had not yearnings at leaving all my old pen-and-ink fellows, merry sociable lads, at leaving them in the Lurch, fag, fag, fag.

"I would not serve another 7 years for seven hundred thousand pound."

To Miss Hutchinson Lamb said; "I would not go back to my prison for seven years longer for £10000 a year."

In the _London Magazine_ the essay was divided into two parts, with the two quotations now at the head apportioned each to one part.

## Part II. began at "A fortnight has passed," on page 224. The essay

was signed "J.D.," whose address was given as "Beaufort-terrace, Regent-street; late of Ironmonger-court, Fenchurch-street."

Page 220, line 3. _Recreation_. At "recreation," in the _London Magazine_, came the footnote:--

"Our ancestors, the noble old Puritans of Cromwell's day, could distinguish between a day of religious rest and a day of recreation; and while they exacted a rigorous abstinence from all amusements (even to the walking out of nursery maids with their little charges in the fields) upon the Sabbath; in the lieu of the superstitious observance of the Saints days, which they abrogated, they humanely gave to the apprentices, and poorer sort of people, every alternate Thursday for a day of entire sport and recreation. A strain of piety and policy to be commended above the profane mockery of the Stuarts and their Book of Sports."

Lamb had said the same thing to Barton in a letter in the spring, 1824, referring there to "Southey's book" as his authority--this being _The Book of the Church_, 1824.

Page 220, line 25. _Native ... Hertfordshire_. This was a slight exaggeration. Lamb was London born and bred. But Hertfordshire was his mother and grandmother's county, and all his love of the open air was centred there (see the essay on "Mackery End").

Page 221, line 1. _My health_. Lamb had really been seriously unwell for some time, as the _Letters_ tell us.

Page 221, line 6. _I was fifty_. Lamb was fifty on February 10, 1825.

Page 231, line 7. _I had grown to my desk_. In his first letter to Barton (September 11, 1822) Lamb wrote: "I am like you a prisoner to the desk. I have been chained to that galley thirty years, a long shot. I have almost grown to the wood." Again, to Wordsworth: "I sit like Philomel all day (but not singing) with my breast against this thorn of a Desk."

Page 222, line 7. _Boldero, Merryweather ..._ Feigned names of course. It was Boldero that Lamb once pretended was Leigh Hunt's true name. And in his fictitious biography of Liston (Vol. I.) Liston's mother was said to have been a Miss Merryweather. In Lamb's early city days there was a banking firm in Cornhill, called Boldero, Adey, Lushington & Boldero.

Page 222, line 12 from foot. _I could walk it away_. Writing to Wordsworth in March, 1822, concerning the possibility of being pensioned off, Lamb had said:--"I had thought in a green old age (O green thought!) to have retired to Ponder's End--emblematic name--how beautiful! in the Ware road, there to have made up my accounts with heaven and the Company, toddling about between it and Cheshunt, anon stretching on some fine Izaac Walton morning, to Hoddsdon or Amwell, careless as a Beggar, but walking walking ever till I fairly walkd myself off my legs, dying walking."

And again, writing to Southey after the emancipation, he says (August, 1825): "Mary walks her twelve miles a day some days, and I twenty on others. 'Tis all holiday with me now, you know."

Page 224, line 9. _Ch----_. John Chambers, son of the Rev. Thomas Chambers, Vicar of Radway-Edgehill, Warwickshire, and an old Christ's Hospitaller, to whom Lamb wrote the famous letter on India House society, printed in the _Letters_, Canon Ainger's edition, under December, 1818. John Chambers lived until 1872, and had many stories of Lamb.

Page 224, line 9. _Do----_. Probably Henry Dodwell, to whom Lamb wrote the letters of July, 1816, from Calne, and that of October 7, 1827, thanking him for a gift of a sucking pig. But there seems (see the letter to Chambers above referred to) to have been also a clerk named Dowley. It was Dodwell who annoyed Lamb by reading _The Times_ till twelve o'clock every morning.

Page 224, line 10. _Pl----_. According to the late H.G. Bohn's notes on Chambers' letter, this was W.D. Plumley.

Page 224, line 18. My "_works_." See note to the preface to the _Last Essays of Elia_. The old India House ledgers of Lamb's day are no longer in existence, but a copy of Booth's _Tables of Interest_ is preserved, with some mock notices from the press on the fly-leaves in Lamb's hand. Lamb's portrait by Meyer was bought for the India Office in 1902.

Page 224, line 12 from foot. _My own master_. As a matter of fact Lamb found the time rather heavy on his hands now and then; and he took to searching for beauties in the Garrick plays in the British Museum as a refuge. The Elgin marbles were moved there in 1816.

Page 225, line 16 from foot. _And what is it all for_? At these words, in the _London Magazine_, came the passage:--

"I recite those verses of Cowley, which so mightily agree with my constitution.

"Business! the frivolous pretence Of human lusts to shake off innocence: Business! the grave impertinence: Business! the thing which I of all things hate: Business! the contradiction of my fate.

"Or I repeat my own lines, written in my Clerk state:--

"Who first invented work--and bound the free And holyday-rejoicing spirit down To the ever-haunting importunity Of business, in the green fields, and the town-- To plough, loom, anvil, spade--and oh! most sad, To this dry drudgery of the desk's dead wood? Who but the Being unblest, alien from good, Sabbathless Satan! he who his unglad Task ever plies 'mid rotatory burnings, That round and round incalculably reel-- For wrath divine hath made him like a wheel-- In that red realm from whence are no returnings; Where toiling, and turmoiling, ever and aye He, and his thoughts, keep pensive worky-day!

"O this divine Leisure!--Reader, if thou art furnished with the Old Series of the London, turn incontinently to the third volume (page 367), and you will see my present condition there touched in a 'Wish' by a daintier pen than I can pretend to. I subscribe to that Sonnet _toto corde_."

The sonnet referred to, beginning--

They talk of time and of time's galling yoke,

will be found quoted above, in the notes to "New Year's Eve." It was, of course, by Lamb himself. To the other sonnet he gave the title "Work" (see Vol. IV.). Cowley's lines are from "The Complaint."

Page 225, line 14 from foot. _NOTHING-TO-DO_. Lamb wrote to Barton in 1827: "Positively, the best thing a man can have to do, is nothing, and next to that perhaps--good works."

* * * * *

Page 226. THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING.

_New Monthly Magazine_, March, 1826, where it was one of the Popular Fallacies, under the title, "That my Lord Shaftesbury and Sir William Temple are models of the Genteel Style in Writing.--We should prefer saying--of the Lordly and the Gentlemanly. Nothing," &c.

Page 226, beginning. _My Lord Shaftesbury_, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), the grandson of the great statesman, and the author of the _Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions and Times_, 1711, and other less known works. In the essay "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading" Lamb says, "Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me."

Page 226, beginning. _Sir William Temple._ Sir William Temple (1628-1699), diplomatist and man of letters, the patron of Swift, and the husband of the letter-writing Dorothy Osborne. His first diplomatic mission was in 1665, to Christopher Bernard von Glialen, the prince-bishop of Munster, who grew the northern cherries (see page 228). Afterwards he was accredited to Brussels and the Hague, and subsequently became English Ambassador at the Hague. He was recalled in 1670, and spent the time between then and 1674, when he returned, in adding to his garden at Sheen, near Richmond, and in literary pursuits. He re-entered active political life in 1674, but retired again in 1680, and moved to an estate near Farnham; which he named Moor Park, laid out in the Dutch style, and made famous for its wall fruit. Hither Swift came, as amanuensis, in 1689, and he was there, with intervals of absence, in 1699, when Temple died, "and with him," Swift wrote in his _Diary_, "all that was good and amiable among men." He was buried in Westminster Abbey, but his heart, by his special wish, was placed in a silver casket under the sun-dial at Moor Park, near his favourite window seat.

Temple's essays, under the title of _Miscellanea_, were published in 1680 and 1692; his works, in several volumes, between 1700 and 1709. The best-known essay is that on "Ancient and Modern Learning," but Lamb refers also to those "On Health and Long Life," "Of the Cure of the Gout," "Of Gardening." The quotation on page 228 does not exactly end Temple's garden essay, as Lamb says. Lamb has slightly altered Temple's punctuation.

* * * * *

Page 230. BARBARA S----.

_London Magazine_, April, 1825.

This little story exhibits, perhaps better than anything that Lamb wrote, his curious gift of blending fact and fancy, of building upon a foundation of reality a structure of whimsicality and invention. In the late Charles Kent's edition of Lamb's works is printed a letter from Miss Kelly, the actress, and a friend of the Lambs, in which the true story is told; for it was she, as indeed Lamb admitted to Wordsworth in a letter in 1825, who told him the incident--"beautifully," he says elsewhere.

Miss Kelly wrote, in 1875:--

I perfectly remember relating an incident of my childhood to Charles Lamb and his dear sister, and I have not the least doubt that the intense interest he seemed to take in the recital, induced him to adopt it as the principal feature in his beautiful story of "Barbara S----." Much, however, as I venerate the wonderful powers of Charles Lamb as a writer--grateful as I ever must feel to have enjoyed for so many years the friendship of himself and his dear sister, and proudly honoured as I am by the two exquisite sonnets he has given to the world as tributary to my humble talent, I have never been able thoroughly to appreciate the extraordinary skill with which he has, in the construction of his story, desired and contrived so to mystify and characterize the events, as to keep me out of sight, and render it utterly impossible for any one to guess at me as the original heroine....

In the year 1799, Miss Jackson, one of my mother's daughters, by her first husband, was placed under the special care of dear old Tate Wilkinson, proprietor of the York Theatre, there to practice, as in due progression, what she had learned of Dramatic Art, while a Chorus Singer at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, coming back, as she did after a few years, as the wife of the late celebrated, inimitable Charles Mathews, to the Haymarket Theatre. In 1799, through the influence of my uncle, Michael Kelly, the celebrated singer and composer of that day, I was allowed to become a miniature chorister in her place....

One Saturday, during the limited season of nine months in the year, Mr. Peake (dear, good old gentleman!) looking, as I remember he always did--anxiously perplexed--doubtless as to how he could best dole out the too frequently insufficient amount provided for the ill-paid company, silently looked me in the face, while he carefully folded a very _dirty, ragged_ bank note--put it into my hand, patted my cheek, and with a slight pressure on my shoulder, hinting there was no time for our usual gossip--as good as said, "go, my dear," and I hurried down the long gallery, lined down each side with performers of all degrees, more than one of whom whispered as I passed--"Is it full pay, dear?" I nodded "Yes," and proceeded to my seat on the window of the landing-place.

It was a great comfort in those days, to have a bank-note to look at; but not always easy to open one. Mine had been cut and repaired with a line of gum paper, about twenty times as thick as the note itself, threatening the total destruction of the thin part.

Now observe in what small matters Fanny and Barbara were in a marked degree different characters. Barbara, at 11 years of age, was some time before she felt the different size of a guinea to a half guinea, _held tight in her hand_. I, at nine years old, was not so untaught, or innocent. I was a woman of the world. I took _nothing_ for granted. I had a deep respect for Mr. Peake, but the join might have disfigured the note--destroyed its currency; and it was my business to see all safe. So, I carefully opened it. A two pound-note instead of one! The blood rushed into my face, the tears into my eyes, and for a moment, something like an ecstasy of joy passed through my mind. "Oh! what a blessing to my dear mother!"--"To whom?"--in an instant said my violently beating heart,--"My mother?" Why she would spurn me for the wish. How shall I ever own to her my guilty thought? I trembled violently--I staggered back on my way to the Treasury, but no one would let me pass, until I said, "But Mr. Peake has given me too much." "Too much, has he?" said one, and was followed by a coarse, cold, derisive, general laugh. Oh! how it went to my heart; but on I went.

"If you please, Mr. Peake, you have given me a two--"

"A what?"

"A two, Sir!"

"A two!--God bless my soul!--tut-tut-tut-tut--dear, dear, dear!--God bless my soul! There, dear," and without another word, he, in exchange, laid a one pound note on the desk; a new one, quite clean,--a bright, honest looking note,--mine, the one I had a right to,--my own,--within the limit of my poor deservings.

Thus, my dear sir, I give (as you say you wish to have the _facts_ as accurately stated as possible) the simple, absolute truth.

As a matter of fact Miss Kelly did afterwards play in Morton's "Children in the Wood," to Lamb's great satisfaction. The incident of the roast fowl is in that play.

In Vol. I. will be found more than one eulogy of Miss Kelly's acting.

Page 231, last line. _Real hot tears_. In Crabb Robinson's diary Miss Kelly relates that when, as Constance, in "King John," Mrs. Siddons (not Mrs. Porter) wept over her, her collar was wet with Mrs. Siddons' tears. Miss Kelly, of course, was playing Arthur.

Page 232, line 7. _Impediment ... pulpit_. This is more true than the casual reader may suppose. Had Lamb not had an impediment in his speech, he would have become, at Christ's Hospital, a Grecian, and have gone to one of the universities; and the ordinary fate of a Grecian was to take orders.

Page 232, line 13. _Mr. Liston_. Mrs. Cowden Clarke says that Liston the comedian and his wife were among the visitors to the Lambs' rooms at Great Russell Street.

Page 232, line 14. _Mrs. Charles Kemble_, _née_ Maria Theresa De Camp, mother of Fanny Kemble.

Page 232, line 16. _Macready_. The only record of any conference between Macready and Lamb is Macready's remark in his _Diary_ that he met Lamb at Talfourd's, and Lamb said that he wished to draw his last breath through a pipe, and exhale it in a pun. But this was long after the present essay was written.

Page 232, line 17. _Picture Gallery ... Mr. Matthews_. See note below.

Page 232, line 26. _Not Diamond's_. Dimond was the proprietor of the old Bath Theatre.

Page 235, first line. _Mrs. Crawford_. Anne Crawford (1734-1801), _née_ Street, who was born at Bath, married successively a Mr. Dancer, Spranger Barry the actor, and a Mr. Crawford. Her great part was Lady Randolph in Home's "Douglas."

* * * * *

Page 235. THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY.

_London Magazine_, October, 1823, where, with slight differences, it formed the concluding portion of the "Letter of Elia to Robert Southey, Esquire," which will be found in Vol. I. The notes in that volume should be consulted; but a little may be said here. This, the less personal portion of the "Letter to Southey," seems to have been all that Lamb cared to retain. He admitted afterwards, when his anger against Southey had cooled, that his "guardian angel" had been "absent" at the time he wrote it.

The Dean of Westminster at the time was Ireland, the friend of Gifford--dean from 1815 to 1842. Lamb's protest against the two-shilling fee was supported a year or so later than its first appearance by Reynolds, in _Odes and Addresses_, 1825, in a sarcastic appeal to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster to reduce that sum. The passage in Lamb's essay being reprinted in 1833, suggests that the reform still tarried. The evidence, however, of J.T. Smith, in his _Book for a Rainy Day_, is that it was possible in 1822 to enter Poets' Corner for sixpence. Dean Stanley, in his _Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, writes: "Free admission was given to the larger part of the Abbey under Dean Ireland. Authorised guides were first appointed in 1826, and the nave and transepts opened, and the fees lowered in 1841...."

Lamb's reference to Southey and to André's monument is characteristically mischievous. He is reminding Southey of his early sympathy with rebels--his "Wat Tyler" and pantisocratic days. Major John André, Sir Henry Clinton's adjutant-general, was caught returning from an interview with an American traitor--a perfectly honourable proceeding in warfare--and was hanged by Washington as a spy in 1780. No blame attached either to judge or victim. André's remains were reburied in the Abbey in 1821. Lamb speaks of injury to André's figure in the monument, but the usual thing was for the figure of Washington to be attacked. Its head has had to be renewed more than once. Minor thefts have also been committed. According to Mrs. Gordon's _Life of Dean Buckland_, one piece of vandalism at any rate was the work of an American, who returned to the dean two heads which he had appropriated as relics.

In _The Examiner_ for April 8, 1821, is quoted from _The Traveller_ the following epigram, which may not improbably be Lamb's, and which shows at any rate that his protest against entrance fees for churches was in the air.

ON A VISIT TO ST. PAUL'S

What can be hop'd from Priests who, 'gainst the Poor, For lack of two-pence, shut the church's door; Who, true successors of the ancient leaven, Erect a turnpike on the road to Heaven? "Knock, and it shall be open'd," saith our LORD; "Knock, and pay two-pence," say the Chapter Board: The Showman of the booth the fee receives, And God's house is again a "den of thieves."

* * * * *

Page 237. AMICUS REDIVIVUS.

_London Magazine_, December, 1823.

A preliminary sketch of the first portion of this essay will be found in the letter from Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt, written probably in November, 1823. In Barry Cornwall's _Memoir_ of Lamb,