Chapter XXXVI: Part II: , were published in 1697. The passage quoted is from that "On (3)

But if the sincere inquirer would see the authenticity of the
Gospels proved by a chain of testimony, step by step, through all
ages, from the days of the Apostles, he is referred to the exact
and diligent Lardner. Even then, perhaps, it may surprize him to be
told that more critical labour, and that too of a severer kind, has
been bestowed upon the New Testament, than upon all other books of
all ages and countries; that there is not a difficult text, a
disputed meaning, or doubtful word, which has not been
investigated, not only through every accessible manuscript, but
through every ancient version; and that the most profound and
laborious scholars whom the world ever produced, generation after
generation, have devoted themselves to these researches, and past
in them their patient, meritorious, and honourable lives. Let him
read Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament, and he will be
satisfied that there is no exaggeration in this statement. The
unwearied diligence, the profound sagacity, and the comprehensive
erudition with which the New Testament has been scrutinized, and
its authenticity ascertained, cannot be estimated too highly; and
we will boldly assert, cannot possibly have been conceived by any
person unacquainted with biblical studies. But here, as in the
history of the Mosaic dispensation, if the books are authentic, the
events which they relate must be true; if they were written by the
evangelists, Christ is our Redeemer and our God:--there is no other
possible conclusion.

Page 272, line 5. _The poor child._ Thornton Leigh Hunt, who afterwards became a journalist, dying in 1873, was born in 1810. Lamb was very fond of this little boy, whom he first saw when he visited Leigh Hunt in prison (1813-1815). He addressed a poem to him, ending:--

Thornton Hunt, my favourite child.

Page 272, line 22. _Thomas Holcroft._ Thomas Holcroft (1745-1809), the playwright and miscellaneous author, one of Lamb's friends, was a republican and a freethinker.

Page 272, line 27. _Accident introduced me ..._ The first literary connection between Lamb and Leigh Hunt was set up by _The Reflector_ (see note on page 445). Leigh Hunt, however, tells us in his _Autobiography_ that he had as a schoolboy at Christ's Hospital seen Lamb--then an old boy: he was by nine and a half years Hunt's senior. Probably Lamb's first real intimacy with Leigh Hunt began with Lamb's visits to him in prison, 1813-1815.

Page 272, line 6 from foot. _An equivocal term._ Hunt's _Story of Rimini_ was reviewed, with Maga's deepest scorn, in _Blackwood_ for November, 1817, under the heading, "The Cockney School of Poetry." Precisely what was the equivocal term referred to by Lamb I do not discover; but unfair emphasis was laid by the reviewer on the poem's alleged incestuous character.

Page 273, line 11. _His handwriting._ In the postscript to his private letter (of apology) to Southey (see above), Lamb took this back.

Page 273, line 18. The "_Political Justice._" Godwin's _Enquiry into Political Justice_, 1793, wherein the marriage ceremony meets with little respect.

Page 273, line 28. _Sundry harsh things ... against our friend C._ Perhaps a reference to _The Examiner's_ criticism of _Remorse_, in 1813. Coleridge, writing to Southey about it, says:--

They were forced to affect admiration of the Tragedy, but yet abuse
me they must, and so comes the old infamous _crambe bis millies
cocta_ of the "sentimentalities, puerilities, whinings, and
meannesses, both of style and thought" in my former writings....

Page 274, line 3. "_Foliage._" Leigh Hunt published _Foliage_ in 1818. It contains, among other familiar epistles, one to Charles Lamb, reprinted, as was the poem on his son, from _The Examiner_. This is one stanza to Thornton Hunt:--

Ah, first-born of thy mother,
When life and hope were new,
Kind playmate of thy brother,
Thy sister, father too;
My light, where'er I go,
My bird, when prison bound,
My hand in hand companion,--no,
My prayers shall hold thee round.

Page 274, line 10. _The other gentleman._ William Hazlitt. Lamb first met Hazlitt about 1805, and they were intimate, with occasional differences, until Hazlitt's death in 1830. Lamb was with him at the end.

Page 275, line 1. _You were pleased (you know where)._ Lamb had been a Unitarian, as had Coleridge and many others of his friends. Later, indeed, he claimed communion with no sect; while Coleridge became as much against Unitarianism as he had once been for it. Southey was himself converted to Unitarianism by Coleridge, in 1794. Later, however, the Church of England had few stouter supporters. What Lamb means by "You know where" I have not been able to discover--a memory possessed possibly only by Lamb and Southey.

Page 275, line 12. _The last time._ The only portion of this "Letter" which Lamb preserved began at this point. He rewrote this particular paragraph and included the remainder in _Last Essays of Elia_, in 1833, under the title, "The Tombs in the Abbey."

Page 276, line 25. _Two shillings._ The fees cannot have been reduced for at least ten years, for in 1833 Lamb reprinted this passage as it stood in 1823. The Abbey is not yet wholly free on every day of the week; but there is no charge except to view the chapels, and that has been reduced to sixpence. The first reduction after Lamb's protest was made by Dean Ireland, whose term of office lasted from 1816 to 1842. It was he also who appointed official guides. Lamb was not alone in this protest against the fees. One of Hood and Reynolds' _Odes and Addresses_, 1825, took up the point again.

Page 277, line 20. _Major André._ John André (1751-1780), a major in the British army in America in the War of Independence. In his capacity as Clinton's Adjutant-General he corresponded with one Arnold, who was plotting to deliver West Point to the British. In the course of his negotiations with Arnold, he crossed into the American lines and was compelled by circumstances to adopt civilian clothes. Being caught in this costume, he was charged as a spy, and, though every effort was made to save him, was, by the necessities of war, shot as such by Washington on October 2, 1780. He died like a hero. The British army donned mourning for his death, and a monument to his memory was erected in Westminster Abbey. Lamb alludes to the mutilation of this monument by the fracture of a nose, but as a matter of fact the whole head of Washington had to be renewed more than once. According to Mrs. Gordon's _Life of Dean Buckland_, two heads taken from the monument were returned from America to the Dean many years ago, with the request that they might be replaced. They had been appropriated as relics. Lamb's reference to Transatlantic Freedom was another hit at Southey's Pantisocratic tendencies (see note above) and his _Joan of Arc_ rebel days.

In the _London Magazine_ for December, 1823, under "The Lion's Head," is the following:--

We have to thank an unknown correspondent for the following

SONNET

Occasioned by reading in ELIA'S LETTER to Dr. Southey, that the
admirable translator of Dante, the modest and amiable C----, still
remained a curate--or, as a waggish friend observed,--after such a
_Translation_ should still be without _Preferment_.[70]

O Thou! who enteredst the tangled wood,
By that same spirit trusting to be led,
That on the first discoverer's footsteps shed
The light with which another world was view'd;
Thou hast well scann'd the path, and firmly stood
With measured niceness in his holy tread,
Till, mounting up thy star-illumined head,
Thou lookedst in upon the perfect good!

What treasures does thy golden key unfold!
Riches immense, the pearl beyond all price,
And saintly truths to gross ears vainly told!

Say, gilds thy earthly path some Beatrice?--
If bread thou want'st, they will but give thee stones,
And when thou'rt gone, will quarrel for thy bones!

--AN UNWORTHY RECTOR.

[70] We suspect, by the way, this is not strictly the case, though
we believe it is very nearly so.

* * * * *

Page 278. GUY FAUX.

_London Magazine_, November, 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb.

This essay is a blend of new and old. The first portion is new; but at the words (page 279, line 3 from foot) "The Gunpowder Treason was the subject," begins a reprint, with very slight modifications, of an article contributed by Lamb to _The Reflector_, No. II., in 1811, under the title "On the Probable Effects of the Gunpowder Treason in this country if the Conspirators had accomplished their Object." _The Reflector_ essay was signed "Speculator."

Page 278, line 1. _Ingenious and subtle writer._ This was Hazlitt, whose article on "Guy Faux," from which Lamb quotes, appeared in _The Examiner_ of November 11, 18 and 25, 1821, signed "Z." Lamb seems to have suggested to Hazlitt this whitewashing of Guido. See Hazlitt's essay on "Persons one would wish to have seen" (1826), reprinted in _Winterslow_, the report of a conversation "twenty years ago," where, after stating that it was Lamb's wish that Guy Faux should be defended, Hazlitt remarks that he supposes he will have to undertake the task himself. Later in the same essay Hazlitt quotes Lamb as mentioning Guy Faux and Judas Iscariot as two persons he would wish to see; adding, of the conspirator:--

I cannot but think that Guy Faux, that poor, fluttering, annual
scarecrow of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give
something to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his
matches and his barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that
was to transport him to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion.

Again, in the article on "Lamb" in the _Spirit of the Age_ (1825) Hazlitt wrote:--

Whittington and his Cat are a fine hallucination for Mr. Lamb's
historic Muse, and we believe he never heartily forgave a certain
writer who took the subject of Guy Faux out of his hands.

A few years afterwards Lamb told Carlyle he regretted that the Faux conspiracy had failed--there would have been such a magnificent _explosion_. Carlyle cites this remark in his diary in evidence of Lamb's imbecility, but I fancy that Lamb had merely taken the measure of his visitor.

Lamb's reference to Hazlitt as an ex-Jesuit with the mention of Douay and M----th (Maynooth, the Irish Roman Catholic College), is, of course, chaff, resulting from Hazlitt's defence of this arch-Romanist.

After "Father of the Church" (page 280, line 7) Lamb had written in _The Reflector_:--

"The conclusion of his discourse is so pertinent to my subject, that
I must beg your patience while I transcribe it. He has been drawing
a parallel between the fire which Vaux and his accomplices
meditated, and that which James and John were willing to have called
down from heaven upon the heads of the Samaritans who would not
receive our Saviour into their houses. 'Lastly,' he says, 'it (the
powder treason) was a fire so strange that it had no example. The
apostles, indeed, pleaded a mistaken precedent for the
reasonableness of their demand, they desired leave to do but _even
as Elias did_. The Greeks only retain this clause, it is not in the
Bibles of the Church of Rome. And, really," etc.

I have collated the passage quoted by Lamb with the original edition of the sermon. Of the Latin phrases which Taylor does not translate, the first is from Sidonius Apollinaris, _Carm._, XXII.: "The stall of the Thracian King, the altars of Busiris, the feasts of Antiphates, and the Tauric sovereignty of Thoas." _Rex Bistonius_ was Diomed, King of the Bistones, in Thrace, who fed his horses with human flesh, and was himself thrown to be their food by Hercules. Busiris, King of Egypt, seized and sacrificed all foreigners who visited this country, and he also was slain by Hercules. Antiphates was King of the Læstrygonians in Sicily, man-eating giants, who destroyed eleven of the ships of Ulysses. Thoas was King of Lemnos, and when the Lemnian women killed all the men in the island, his daughter, Hypsipylé, then elected queen, saved him, and he fled to Taurus where he became a king. This is the only legend of cruelty associated with the name of Thoas, and of course he is not the prepetrator; the crime is that of the women.

Concerning Taylor's second quotation, I am informed that the words "_ergo quæ ... tuas qui_" occur (virtually) in Prudentius, _Cathemerinon_, V., 81. The Latin is monkish, but means evidently: "But that massacre of princes who fell unavenged, Christ brooked not, lest perchance the house that His Father had built should be overthrown. And so what tongue can unfold Thy praise, O Christ, who dost abase the disloyal people and its treacherous ruler?"

Page 284, line 11 from foot. _Bellamy's room._ The old refreshment room of the House. There is a description of it in _Sketches by Boz_--"A Parliamentary Sketch."

Page 284, line 6 from foot. _Berenice's curl._ After these words came, in _The Reflector_ version of the essay, this passage:--

"--all, in their degrees, glittering somewhere. Sussex misses her
member[71] on earth, but is consoled to view him, on a starry night,
siding the Great Bear. Cambridge beholds hers[72] next Scorpio. The
gentle Castlereagh curdles in the Milky Way."

[71] "J---- F----, Esq."

[72] "Sir V---- G----."

The member for Sussex at the time this essay was written (1811) was John Fuller, or Jack Fuller, of Rosehill, Sussex, and Devonshire Place, a bluff, eccentric character about town in those days, of huge stature and great wealth, whose house was famous for its musical soirées. Lamb calls him Ursa Major; his friend Jekyll, the wit, and one of Lamb's Old Benchers, called him the Hippopotamus. He once was forcibly removed from the House for refusing to give way and calling the Speaker "the insignificant little person in a wig." Fuller did not sit after 1812. He died in 1834. The member for Cambridge University was Sir Vicary Gibbs, then Attorney General, who in that capacity was a fierce opponent of the press, amongst those prosecuted by him being John and Leigh Hunt. From his caustic tongue he was known as Vinegar Gibbs--hence the reference to Scorpio. Castlereagh was, in 1823, no more; he had committed suicide in 1821.

* * * * *

Page 285. ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST."

_London Magazine_, November 1823. Not reprinted by Lamb.

In the _Magazine_ it was entitled "Nugæ Criticæ. By the author of _Elia_. II. On a Passage in 'The Tempest,'" the first contribution under this general title being the essay on Sir Philip Sidney's sonnets in the _London Magazine_, September, 1823, reprinted in the _Last Essays of Elia_. Lamb did not continue the series. The present paper was signed "L."

An ingenious commentary upon Lamb's theory was contributed by "Lælius" to the December _London Magazine_. After detailing his objections to Ogilby's narrative as a final solution, he put forward a theory of his own which is interesting enough to be reprinted here. Lælius wrote:--

The sense which I always attributed to the passage is this: _uno
verbo_, the Witch Sycorax was _pregnant_;--and that humanity which
teaches us to spare the guilty mother for the sake of her embryo
innocent, was imputed by Shakespeare to the Algerines on this
occasion.... The "one thing she did" is evidently what Shakespeare
in his "Merchant of Venice" with great delicacy calls "the deed of
kind;" and this sense, though by no means obvious, is justly
inferrible from the context. Why then should it not be preferred? I
have not been able to discover any thing in the rest of the piece
inconsistent with the meaning here attributed to these lines; you,
perhaps, may be more successful. A friend objected to me, that the
law is,--to spare the mother _only_ till the birth of her child,
and therefore that the Witch, instead of being exiled at once,
would have been kept till she was delivered, and then punished
with death for her "manifold mischiefs." But poets are not
expected to dispense justice with such nice and legal
discrimination,--not to speak of what might have been the immediate
necessity of expelling Sycorax from the Algerine community, either
by death or banishment; the former of which was forbidden by the
existing circumstances of her situation.

In connection with this theory it may be remarked that it was an old belief that during pregnancy a woman's eyes became blue. Webster, in the "Duchess of Malfi," makes Bosola say of the Duchess:--

The fins of her eyelids look most teeming blue.

I do not know of any editor of Shakespeare who has adopted Lamb's suggestion.

* * * * *

Page 288. ORIGINAL LETTER OF JAMES THOMSON.

_London Magazine_, November, 1824. Not reprinted by Lamb.

This letter of James Thomson is printed in this edition, because Lamb was sufficiently interested in it to copy it out; but it is believed to be a genuine work of the author of the _Seasons_, and not, as has been stated, a hoax of Lamb's. In the memoir of Thomson by Sir Harris Nicolas (revised by Peter Cunningham), prefixed to the Aldine edition of Thomson's poems, the letter will be found in its right place. It is addressed to Dr. Cramston, September, 1725.

* * * * *

Page 292. BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.

_London Magazine_, January, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

This article was not signed, but we know it to be Lamb's from a reference in a letter to Miss Hutchinson, of January 20, 1825:--

"But did you read the 'Memoir of Liston'? and did you guess whose it
was? Of all the Lies I ever put off, I value this most. It is from
top to toe, every paragraph, Pure Invention; and has passed for
Gospel, has been republished in newspapers, and in the penny
play-bills of the Night, as an authentic Account. I shall certainly
go to the Naughty Man some day for my Fibbings."

Writing to Barton on February 10, 1825, Lamb alludes to it again, remarking, "A life more improbable for him [Liston] to have lived would not be easily invented."

To come from Lamb to facts--according to the best accounts that we have, the father of John Liston (1776?-1846) was either a watchmaker, or a subordinate official in the Custom House. He went to Soho School, afterwards became an usher at Dr. Burney's school at Gosport, and in 1799 was a master at the Grammar School of St. Martin's in Castle Street, Leicester Square. His first appearance on the stage proper was at Weymouth, where he failed utterly. Later he joined a touring company in the north of England as a serious actor, and again failed. At last, however, a manager induced him to take up comic old men's and bumpkins' parts, and his real talents were at once discovered. Thereafter he succeeded steadily, until his salary was larger than that paid to any other comedian of his time. His greatest part was Paul Pry in John Poole's play of that name, which was produced in September in the year of Lamb's essay. Liston left the stage in 1837. He married a Miss Tyrer, a favourite actress in burlesque. Liston's own tendency to punning and practical jokes must have led him to look upon this spurious biography with much favour.

Mrs. Cowden Clarke in her autobiography, _My Long Life_, says that she often met Mr. and Mrs. Liston in the Lambs' rooms in Great Russell Street.

It is interesting, in connection with Lamb's joke, to know that Liston's library contained a number of works of biblical criticism.

* * * * *

Page 299. A VISION OF HORNS.

_London Magazine_, January, 1825. Signed "Elia." Not reprinted by Lamb.

I had some little doubt as to whether or no to include in the present edition this fantasia on a theme no longer acceptable, since Lamb himself says he did not care to be associated with it. "The Horns is in poor taste [he wrote to Miss Hutchinson], resembling the most laboured papers in the Spectator. I had sign'd it 'Jack Horner:' but Taylor and Hessey said, it would be thought an offensive article, unless I put my known signature to it; and wrung from me my slow consent." And again, to Barton: "I am vexed that ugly paper should have offended. I kept it as clear from objectionable phrases as possible, and it was Hessey's fault, and my weakness, that it did not appear anonymous. No more of it, for God's sake."

Lamb's objections being, however, lodged rather against the publicity of the essay's paternity than the essay itself, and the aim of the present edition being to be as complete as possible, the essay stands. Moreover it has a peculiar interest as being to a large extent an experiment in what we might call Congrevism: forming a whimsical appendix to the _Elia_ essay on the "Artificial Comedy," wherein Lamb urges upon the readers of the old licentious plays the value of dissociating them in their minds altogether from real life; looking upon them purely as fanciful dramas of an impossible society; and thus being able to enjoy their wit and high spirits without shock to the moral sensibilities. In his "Vision of Horns" Lamb seems to me to be himself dramatising this genial and reasonable view. He has carried out Congreve's method to a still higher power, and imagined a land peopled wholly by cuckolds--a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the old English and modern French comedy theory of society. Rightly the essay should follow that on the "Artificial Comedy" as an ironical postscript.

* * * * *

Page 304. THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT.

_New Monthly Magazine_, January, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

The footnote with which the article properly begins refers to the last effort, then in preparation, which was made to add to the life of the State Lottery. Actually, the last State Lottery in England was held on October 18, 1826.

Page 305, line 4. _Devout Chancellors of the Exchequer_. The lottery produced between £250,000 and £300,000 per annum. Its death was decreed by a Parliamentary Committee which had inquired into its merits and demerits as a means of replenishing the national coffers.

Page 305, line 9. _Sorrowing contractors_. It was customary to apportion the sale of lottery tickets among speculators, who sold them again, if possible at a profit. The most prominent of these at the last was T. Bish (see below).

Page 305, line 28. _The Blue-coat Boy_. It was the habit, which began about 1694, for a dozen boys from Christ's Hospital to be requisitioned by the lottery controllers, from whom two were selected to draw the tickets from the wheels in Coopers' Hall. An old print, given in the Rev. E. H. Pearce's _Annals of Christ's Hospital_, 1901, shows them at their work.

Page 309, line 3. _The art and mystery of puffing_. An interesting collection of lottery puffs will be found in Hone's _Every-Day Book_, Vol. II., November 15. The arch-professor of puffery in the lottery's later days was T. Bish, of Cornhill and Charing Cross, whose blandishments to the public were often presented in ingenious verse. We know from one of Mary Lamb's letters that Lamb (in addition to speculating in lottery tickets) had himself written lottery puffs twenty years earlier than this essay; but I have not been able confidently to trace any to his hand.

* * * * *

Page 310. UNITARIAN PROTESTS.

_London Magazine_, February, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

The marriages of Unitarian and other Dissenters had to be solemnised in English established churches until the end of 1836. Lord Hardwicke's Act of 1753, in force, with certain modifications, at the time of Lamb's essay, provided that all marriages not performed in church, with due publication of banns and licence duly granted, were null and void. It was customary, after the ceremony in an established church, to lodge a protest against the terms of the service. Hence Lamb's scathing strictures. Lamb was himself nominally a Unitarian, as were many of his friends. In 1796, as he told Coleridge, he adored Priestley almost to the point of sin. But in later life Lamb dropped away from all sects, although he says, in a late letter, that he is as old a "one-goddite" as George Dyer himself. Hood, who knew Lamb well, and wrote of him as lovingly as any one, remarked in his "Literary Reminiscences" in _Hood's Own_, probably with truth:--

As regards his Unitarianism, it strikes me as more probable that he
was what the unco' guid people call "Nothing at all," which means
that he was every thing but a Bigot. As he was in spirit an Old
Author, so was he in faith an Ancient Christian, too ancient to
belong to any of the modern sub-hubbub divisions of--Ists,--Arians,
and--Inians.

And it is told of Lamb that he once complained that the Unitarians had robbed him of two-thirds of his God.

I do not identify M----, the friend to whom this letter was written.

* * * * *

Page 314. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN.

_London Magazine_, February, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

This skit followed "The Biography of Mr. Liston" (page 292) which was printed in the preceding month's issue. Leigh Hunt, referring in his own _Autobiography_ to this exercise of invention, says: "Munden he [Lamb] made born at 'Stoke Pogis;' the very sound of which was like the actor speaking and digging his words."

To come to fact, Joseph Shepherd Munden (b. 1758) was the son of a poulterer in Leather Lane, Holborn, where he was born. At the age of twelve he was errand boy to an apothecary and afterwards was apprenticed to a law stationer. More than once--incited by admiration of Garrick--he ran away to join strolling companies, and at last he took to the stage altogether. Of his powers as an actor Lamb's other descriptions of him (see page 397 of this volume and the famous Elia essay) say enough. Munden's last appearance was on May 31, 1824. He died in 1832. His son was Thomas Shepherd Munden, who died, aged fifty, in 1850. He wrote his father's life.

In Raymond's _Memoirs of Elliston_ is an account of an excursion which Lamb once made with Elliston and Munden. I quote it in the notes in Vol. II.

* * * * *

Page 317. THE "LEPUS" PAPERS.

These papers appeared in _The New Times_ at various dates in 1825. We know them to be Lamb's from internal evidence and from the following allusion in Crabb Robinson's MS. Diary preserved at Dr. Williams' Library:--

"January 7, 1825. Called on Lamb and chatted. He has written in _The New Times_ an article against visitors. He means to express his feelings towards young Godwin, for it is chiefly against the children of old friends that he humorously vents his spleen." The article in question, No. I. of the series, is No. X. of a series called Variorum. Lamb's signature, Lepus (a hare), is appended to all that are here included.

The Variorum series lasted flaggingly until April, one of the last articles in it being Lamb's review of the _Odes and Addresses_ (see page 335), which, however, was not signed Lepus. It then died. In August a new series, entitled "Sketches Original and Select," was begun, with an article--"A Character"--by Lepus, but this also soon flagged. Lamb does not seem to have contributed to it again.

Page 317. I.--MANY FRIENDS.

_The New Times_, January 8, 1825. Signed "Lepus."

Another proof of Lamb's authorship of this essay will be found in a letter from him to Walter Savage Landor on October 9, 1832, where he writes:--

"Next, I forgot to tell you I knew all your Welsh annoyancers, the measureless B.'s. I knew a quarter of a mile of them. Seventeen brothers and sixteen sisters, as they appear to me in memory. There was one of them that used to fix his long legs on my fender, and tell a tale of a shark every night, endless, immortal. How have I grudged the salt-sea ravener not having had his gorge of him! The shortest of the daughters measured five foot eleven without her shoes. Well, some day we may confer about them. But they were tall. Truly, I have discover'd the longitude."

Lamb also returned to the charge a little later in the Popular Fallacy "That Home is Home." The first idea for both this essay and the Fallacy we find in the letter to Mrs. Wordsworth dated February 18, 1818. Lamb also utilised a portion of this essay in his Popular Fallacy "That You must Love Me, and Love My Dog," published in February, 1826.

Page 318, last line. _Captain Beacham._ From the letter to Landor we know this name to have disguised that of a brother of the Lambs' friend, Matilda Betham, the author of _The Lay of Marie_.

Page 319. II.--READERS AGAINST THE GRAIN.

_The New Times_, January 13, 1825. Signed "Lepus."

Page 322. III.--MORTIFICATIONS OF AN AUTHOR.

_The New Times_, January 31, 1825. Signed "Lepus."

Page 322, line 7 from foot. _A----n C----m_. Allan Cunningham.

Page 324. IV.--TOM PRY.

_The New Times_, February 8, 1825. Signed "Lepus."

The original of this character sketch was probably Thomas Hill, the drysalter, whom Lamb knew well. S. C. Hall's _Book of Memories_, p. 157, says: "His peculiar faculty was to find out what everybody did, from a minister of state to a stable-boy," etc. etc. John Poole's famous play "Paul Pry," in which Liston played so admirably, was not produced until September of this year, 1825. Lamb and Poole had a slight acquaintance through the _London Magazine_, to which Poole contributed dramatic burlesques. Lamb had given to the landlord in "Mr. H.," in 1806, the name and character of Pry.

Page 324, line 5 of essay. _Like the man in the play._ Chremes, in the opening scene of the _Heauton Timoroumenos_ by Terence (line 77), says: "Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto". I am a man and to nothing that concerns mankind am I indifferent.

Page 325, line 8. "_Usque recurrit._" Horace's _Epist._, L, x., lines 24-25:--

Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret,
Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.

(You may drive Nature out with a pitchfork, yet she will persistently return, and will stealthily break through depraved fancies, and be winner.)

Page 326. V.--TOM PRY'S WIFE.

_The New Times_, February 28, 1825. Signed "Lepus."

In a letter from Lamb to the Kenneys, of which the date is uncertain, we get an inkling as to the identity of Mrs. Pry:--

"I suppose you know we've left the Temple pro tempore. By the way,
this conduct has caused many strange surmises in a good lady of our
acquaintance. She lately sent for a young gentleman of the India
House, who lives opposite her at Monroe's the flute shop in Skinner
Street, Snowhill,--I mention no names. You shall never get out of me
what lady I mean,--on purpose to ask all he knew about us. I had
previously introduced him to her whist table. Her inquiries embraced
every possible thing that could be known of me--how I stood in the
India House, what was the amount of my salary, what it was likely to
be hereafter, whether I was thought clever in business, why I had
taken country lodgings, why at Kingsland in particular, had I
friends in that road, was anybody expected to visit me, did I wish
for visitors, would an unexpected call be gratifying or not, would
it be better that she sent beforehand, did any body come to see me,
was not there a gentleman of the name of Morgan, did he know him,
didn't he come to see me, did he know how Mr. Morgan lived, she
could never make out how they were maintained, was it true he lived
out of the profits of a linen draper's shop in Bishopsgate Street?"

Mrs. Godwin's address was 41 Skinner Street.

Again, Mary Lamb tells Sarah Hazlitt on November 7, 1809: "Charles told Mrs. Godwin Hazlitt had found a well in his garden which, water being scarce in your country, would bring him in two hundred a year; and she came in great haste the next morning to ask me if it were true."

Page 327. VI.--A CHARACTER.

_The New Times_, August 25, 1825. Signed "Lepus."

This differed from the five papers that have preceded it in inaugurating a new series entitled "Sketches Original and Select." Lepus, however, contributed no more. I have no idea who the original Egomet was, possibly an India House clerk. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, the Janus Weathercock of the _London Magazine_, had occasionally used the pseudonym Egomet Bonmot, and Lamb may have borrowed it.

Page 328, line 26. "_There is no reciprocity._" Lamb may have been remembering a story in Joe Miller about the reciprocity being "all on one side."

Page 328, line 6 from foot. "_Nimium vicini._" In allusion to Virgil's (_Ecl._, IX., 28) "Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ"--"Mantua alas, too near ill-starred Cremona" (for it shared the fate of Cremona, which had rebelled against Augustus and suffered confiscation). Lamb comments in his "Popular Fallacies" upon Swift's punning use of the phrase.

* * * * *

Page 329. REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY.

_London Magazine_, March, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

The editor's note is undoubtedly Lamb's, as is, of course, the whole imaginary story. It must have been about this time that Lamb was writing his "Ode to the Treadmill" which appeared in _The New Times_ in October, 1825.

The pillory, which has not been used in this country since 1837, was latterly kept principally for seditious and libellous offenders. In May, 1812, for instance, Eaton, the publisher of Tom Paine's _Age of Reason_, stood in the pillory. The time was usually one hour, as in the case of Lamb's hero, the victim being a quarter turned at each fifteen minutes, in order that every member of the crowd might witness the disgrace. The offender's neck and wrists were fixed in holes cut for the purpose in a plank fastened crosswise to an upright pole. The London pillories were erected in different spots--at Charing Cross, in the Haymarket, in St. Martin's Lane, opposite the Royal Exchange, and elsewhere.

Page 331, line 1. _My friends from over the water_. Referring to the prisoners in the King's Bench Prison at Southwark, who would be allowed out during the day--hence "ephemeral Romans," or freemen, and "flies of a day": being obliged to return at night. (Shakespeare uses flies in this sense. "The slaves of chance and flies of every wind that blows," he says in "The Winter's Tale.") Lamb's friend, William Hone, was imprisoned in the King's Bench for a while from 1826, editing in confinement the end of his _Every-Day Book_ and the whole of the _Table Book_.

Page 332, lines 16 and 17. _Bastwick ... Prynne ... Defoe ... Shebbeare._ John Bastwick (1593-1654) was condemned to lose his ears in the pillory for writing the _Letanie of Dr. John Bastwicke_, an attack on the bishops.--William Prynne (1600-1669) was pilloried twice, the first time for his _Histrio-Mastix_ (referred to by Lamb in the biography of Liston on page 292), and the second time for his support of Bastwick against the bishops, particularly Laud. He also lost his ears.--John Shebbeare (1709-1788) was pilloried for satirising the House of Hanover. An Irishman held an umbrella over his head the while.--Concerning Defoe and the pillory see Lamb's "Ode to the Treadmill" and note in the volume devoted to his poems and plays.

Page 332, line 28. _Charles closed the Exchequer._ This was in 1671. In Green's _Short History of the English People_ we read: "So great was the national opposition to his schemes that Charles was driven to plunge hastily into hostilities. The attack on a Dutch convoy was at once followed by a declaration of war, and fresh supplies were obtained for the coming struggle by closing the Exchequer, and suspending under Clifford's advice the payment of either principal or interest on loans advanced to the public Treasury." The present Royal Exchange was begun in 1842.

* * * * *

Page 333. THE LAST PEACH.

_London Magazine_, April, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Lamb's letter to Bernard Barton of December 1, 1824, warning him against peculation, probably suggested this essay, which contains yet another glimpse of Blakesware house and Lamb's boyhood there.

Page 333, line 8. _That unfortunate man_. Henry Fauntleroy (1785-1824) was partner in the bank of Marsh, Sibbald & Co., of Berners Street. In 1815 he began a series of forgeries of trustees' signatures--as he affirmed, entirely in the interests of the credit of the house, and in no way for his own gratification--which culminated in the failure of the bank in 1824. His trial caused intense excitement in the country. On November 2, 1824, sentence of death was passed, and on the 30th Fauntleroy was hanged. Many attempts were made to obtain a reprieve, and an Italian twice offered to suffer death in his place. The story was long current that Fauntleroy had secreted a silver tube in his windpipe, had thereby escaped strangulation, and was living abroad. This would appeal peculiarly to Lamb, since his essay on "The Inconveniences of Being Hanged" and his farce "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," alike bear on that subject.

* * * * *

Page 335. "ODES AND ADDRESSES TO GREAT PEOPLE."

_The New Times_, April 12, 1825. Now reprinted for the first time.

We know this review to be by Lamb from the evidence of a letter to Coleridge on July 2, 1825, in reply to one in which Coleridge taxed Lamb with the authorship of the book. Coleridge wrote:--

But my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you,
or _una cum_ you. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious
and assimilative enough of your converse to have reproduced you so
honestly, supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his lockup
house.... [Added later] No! Charles, it is _you_. I have read them
over again, and I understand why you have an'on'd the book. The
puns are nine in ten good, many excellent, the Newgatory
transcendent!... Then moreover and besides, to speak with becoming
modesty, excepting my own self, who is there but you who could
write the musical lines and stanzas that are intermixed [with the
personalities and puns]?

(The "Newgatory" pun was in the Friendly Epistle to Mrs. Elizabeth Fry:--

I like your carriage, and your silken grey,
Your dove-like habits, and your silent teaching,
But I don't like your Newgatory preaching.)

Lamb replied:--

"The Odes are four-fifths done by Hood, a silentish young man you
met at Islington one day, an invalid. The rest are Reynolds's, whose
sister H. has recently married. I have not had a broken finger in
them. They are hearty, good-natured things, and I would put my name
to 'em cheerfully, if I could as honestly. I complimented 'em in a
newspaper, with an abatement for those puns you laud so. They are
generally an excess. A Pun is a thing of too much consequence to be
thrown in as a make-weight. You shall read one of the 'Addresses'
over and miss the puns, and it shall be quite as good, and better,
than when you discover 'em. A Pun is a noble thing _per se_: O never
lug it in as an accessory. A Pun is a sole object for Reflection
(_vide my_ 'Aids' to that recessment from a savage state)--it is
entire, it fills the mind; it is perfect as a sonnet, better. It
limps ashamed in the train and retinue of Humour: it knows it should
have an establishment of its own. The one, for instance, I made the
other day,----I forget what it was.

"Hood will be gratified, as much as I am, by your mistake. I liked
'Grimaldi' the best; it is true painting of abstract clowning, and
that precious concrete of a clown: and the rich succession of
images, and words almost such, in the first half of the 'Magnum
Ignotum.'"

Other evidence is supplied by the Forster collection at South Kensington, which contains a copy of the review with a message for Lamb scribbled on it.

Thomas Hood (1799-1845), whom Lamb first met in connection with the _London Magazine_, of which Hood acted as sub-editor, married Jane Reynolds in 1824. John Hamilton Reynolds (1796-1852), her brother, wrote for the _London Magazine_ over the signature "Edward Herbert." The _Odes and Addresses_ appeared anonymously in the spring of 1825. Coleridge's attribution of the work to Lamb was not very happy; its amazing agility was quite out of his power. But Coleridge occasionally nodded in these matters, or he would not have been equally positive a few years earlier that Lamb was the author of Reynolds' _Peter Bell_.

In at least two of the odes and addresses the authors followed in Lamb's own footsteps and adapted to their own use some of his thunder. In the address to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster the argument for free admission, as expressed in Lamb's "Letter to Southey" in 1823 (see pages 275-277), is extended, with additional levity; and again in the ode to Mr. Bodkin, the Hon. Secretary to the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity, Lamb's _Elia_ essay on "The Decay of Beggars" is emphasised. According to a copy of the book marked by Hood, now in the possession of Mr. Buxton Forman, Reynolds wrote only the odes to M'Adam, Dymoke, Sylvanus Urban, Elliston and the Dean and Chapter.

Compare Lamb's other remarks on punning in "Popular Fallacies" and "Distant Correspondents."

Page 335, line 9. _Peter Pindar ... Colman_. Peter Pindar was the name assumed by Dr. John Wolcot (1738-1819) when he lashed and satirised his contemporaries in his very numerous odes. Colman was George Colman the younger (1762-1836), the dramatist, and author of _Broad Grins_, 1802, a collection of free and easy comic verse.

Page 335, foot. _The immortal Grimaldi_. Joseph Grimaldi (1779-1837), the clown. He did not actually leave the stage until 1828, but his appearances had been only occasional for several years.

Page 336, second stanza. "_Berkeley's Foote_." This was Maria Foote (1797?-1867), the actress, afterwards Countess of Harrington, who was abandoned by Colonel Berkeley after the birth of two children, and whose woes were made public through a breach-of-promise action brought by her against "Pea Green" Hayes a little later.

* * * * *

Page 337. THE RELIGION OF ACTORS.

_New Monthly Magazine_, April, 1826. Not reprinted by Lamb; but known to be his by a sentence in a letter to Bernard Barton. This paper is of course as nonsensical as that on Liston.

Page 337, line 4 of essay. _A celebrated tragic actor_. Referring to the action for criminal conversation brought by Alderman Cox against Edmund Kean, in 1824, in which Kean was cast in £800 damages, and which led during the following seasons to hostile demonstrations against him both in England and America. For many performances he played only to men.

Page 337, line 11 of essay. _Miss Pope_. See note on page 465.

Page 338, line 1. _The present licenser_. George Colman the younger, whose pedantic severity was out of all proportion to the freedom which in his earlier play-writing and verse-writing days he had allowed himself. In his evidence before a committee of the House of Commons, in an inquiry into the state of the drama in 1832, he admitted having refused to pass the term "angel," addressed by a lover to his lady, on the ground that "an angel was a heavenly body."

Page 338, line 3. _Fawcett._ This would be John Fawcett (1768-1837), famous in bluff parts. He was treasurer and trustee of the Covent Garden Theatrical Fund for many years.

Page 338, line 3. _The five points._ The Five Points of Doctrine, maintained by the Calvinists, were Original Sin, Predestination, Irresistible Grace, Particular Redemption and the Final Perseverance of the Saints.

Page 338, line 4. _Dicky Suett._ Richard Suett (1755-1805), the comedian of whom Lamb wrote so enthusiastically in "The Old Actors."

Page 338, line 7. _Br----'s "Religio Dramatici."_ I imagine that John Braham, the tenor (1774?-1856), _né_ Abraham, had put forth a manifesto stating that he had embraced the Christian faith; but I can get no information on the subject. See Lamb's other references to Braham in the _Elia_ essay "Imperfect Sympathies."

Page 338, line 8 from foot. _Dr. Watts._ Dr. Isaac Watts' version of the Psalms, 1719, takes great liberties with the originals, evangelising them, omitting much, and even substituting "Britain" for "Israel."

Page 338, foot. _St. Martin's ... St. Paul's, Covent Garden._ The two parishes in which the chief theatres were situated.

Page 339, line 3. _Two great bodies._ The Covent Garden Company and the Drury Lane Company.

Page 339, line 7. _Mr. Bengough ... Mr. Powell._ Two useful actors in their day.

Page 339, line 18. _Notorious education of the manager._ Charles Kemble (1775-1854), then manager of Covent Garden, had been educated at the English Jesuit College at Douay, where his brother, John Philip Kemble, had preceded him.

Page 339, line 20. _Mr. T----y._ This would probably be Daniel Terry (1780-1829), then manager, with Yates, of the Adelphi. The allusion to him as a member of the Kirk of Scotland probably refers to his well-known adoration and imitation of Sir Walter Scott, whom he closely resembled.

Page 339, line 25. _Mr. Fletcher._ The Rev. Alexander Fletcher, minister of the Albion Chapel in Moorfields, who was suspended by the Synod of the Presbyterian Church in 1824 for his share in a breach-of-promise case.

Page 339, lines 29 and 30. _Miss F----e and Madame V----s._ Miss F----e would probably be Miss Foote (see note on page 521). Madame Vestris (1797-1856), the comedienne and wife of Charles James Mathews. It might not be out of place to state that Sublapsarians consider the election of grace as a remedy for an existing evil, and Supralapsarians view it as a part of God's original purpose in regard to men.

Page 339, lines 32 and 33. _Mr. Pope_ ... _Mr. Sinclair_. Alexander Pope (1752-1835), the comedian. John Sinclair (1791-1857), the singer.

Page 339, line 33. _Mr. Grimaldi_. See the note on page 521. Grimaldi's son Joseph S. Grimaldi made his début as Man Friday in 1814 and died in 1832. The Jumpers were a Welsh sect of Calvinist Methodists.

Page 340, line 7. _Mr. Elliston_. Robert William Elliston (1774-1831), the comedian, who had been manager of Drury Lane, 1821-1826. Lamb's _Elia_ essays on this character lend point to his suggestion that Elliston leaned towards the Muggletonians, a sect which by that time was almost extinct, after two centuries' existence.

* * * * *

Page 340. A POPULAR FALLACY.

_New Monthly Magazine_, June, 1826, where it formed part of the series of "Popular Fallacies," of which all the others were reprinted in the _Last Essays of Elia_. Lamb did not reprint it.

The unnamed works referred to are _The Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter_, 1724, by John Anstis (not Anstey), Garter King-at-Arms, and Elias Ashmole's _Institutions, Laws and Ceremonies of the Order of the Garter_, 1672. In the passage quoted from William Hay's _Deformity, an Essay_, 1754, the author is speaking of his experiences when in a mob.

* * * * *

Page 342. REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS, ESQ.

_New Monthly Magazine_, June, 1826. Signed "Elia." Not reprinted by Lamb.

Lamb seems to have intended to write a story of some length, for the promise "To be continued" was appended to the first instalment. But he did not return to it.

* * * * *

Page 349. CONTRIBUTIONS TO HONE'S "EVERY-DAY BOOK" AND "TABLE BOOK."

I have arranged together all Lamb's prose contributions (except "A Death-Bed" and the Garrick Extracts) to William Hone's volumes--the _Every-Day Book_, both series, and the _Table Book_--in order to give them unity. It seemed better to do this than to interrupt the series for the sake of a chronological order which at this period of Lamb's life (1825-1827) was of very little importance. Three not absolutely certain pieces will be found in the Appendix.

William Hone (1780-1842) was a man of independent mind and chequered career. He started life in an attorney's office, but in 1800 exchanged the law for book-and-print selling, and began to exercise his thoughts upon public questions, always siding with the unpopular minority. He examined into what he considered public scandals with curiosity and persistence, undiscouraged by such private calamities as bankruptcy, and in many ways showed himself an "Enemy of the People." Some squibs against the Government, in the form of parodies of the Litany, the Church Catechism and the Athanasian Creed, led to a famous trial on December 17-19, 1817, in which, after a prolonged sitting--Hone's speech in his own defence lasting seven hours--he was acquitted, in spite of the adverse summing up of Lord Ellenborough. The verdict is said to have hastened Ellenborough's death. A public subscription for Hone realised upwards of £3,000, and he thereupon entered upon a more materially successful period of his career. He became more of a publisher and author, and less of a firebrand. He issued a number of cheap but worthy books, and in 1823 his own first important work, _Ancient Mysteries_.

Hone's title to fame, however, rests upon his discovery of George Cruikshank's genius and his _Every-Day Book_ (Vol. I. running through 1825 and published in 1826; Vol. II. running through 1826 and published in 1827), his _Table Talk_, 1827, and his _Year Book_, 1831. These are admirable collections of old English lore, legends and curiosities, brought together by a kind-hearted, simple-minded man, to whom thousands of readers and hundreds of makers of books are indebted.

William Hone and financial complexity were unhappily never strangers, and in 1826 he was in prison for debt; indeed he finished the _Every-Day Book_ and edited the _Table Book_ there. A few years later, largely by Lamb's instrumentality, he was placed by his friends in a coffee-house--the Grasshopper, in Gracechurch Street--but he did not make it succeed. He died in 1842.

Lamb and Hone first met probably in 1823. In May of that year Lamb acknowledges Hone's gift of a copy of _Ancient Mysteries_ and asks him to call. In 1825 Lamb is contributing to the _Every-Day Book_, and in July he lends Hone his house at Islington, while Mary and himself are at Enfield. The _Every-Day Book_, July 14, 1825, has a humorous letter from Hone to Lamb, written from Islington, entitled "A Hot Letter," which Lamb acknowledges in a reply to Hone on the 25th. This letter was addressed to Captain Lion--Hone's joke upon Lamb's name. In the answers to correspondents on the wrapper of one of the periodical parts of the _Every-Day Book_ Mr. Bertram Dobell has found quoted one of Lion's good things: "'J. M.' is a wag. His 'derivation' reminds the Editor of an observation the other day by his witty friend Mr. LION. Being pressed to take some rhubarb pie, Mr. L. declined because it was physic; to the reply that it was pleasant and innocent, he rejoined, 'So is a daisy, but I don't therefore like daisy pie.' 'Daisy pie! who ever heard of daisy pies?' 'My authority is Shakespeare; he expressly mentions daisies pied.'"

It was in the number of the _London Magazine_ for July, 1825, that Lamb's signed verses to the editor of the _Every-Day Book_ appeared, beginning:--

I like you, and your book, ingenuous Hone,

(still too often printed "ingenious"); a testimonial which must have meant much to Hone at that time. Hone copied them into the _Every-Day Book_ for July 9, 1825, with a rhymed reply.

Hone had for Lamb's genius and character an intense enthusiasm. The _Every-Day Book_ is enriched by many quotations from Lamb's writings, with occasional bursts of eulogy. For example, on December 31, of Vol. I., when quoting from "New Year's Eve," he remarks:--

among the other delightful essays of his volume entitled "ELIA"--a
little book, whereof to say that it is of more gracious feeling and
truer beauty than any of our century is poor praise ...

And on September 23, of Vol. II., when quoting "My First Play":--

After the robbery of "ELIA," my conscience forces me to declare
that I wish every reader would save me from the shame of further
temptation to transgress, by ordering "ELIA" into his collection.
There is no volume in our language so full of beauty, truth and
feeling, as the volume of "ELIA." I am convinced that every person
who has not seen it, and may take the hint, will thank me for
acquainting him with a work which we cannot look into without
pleasure, nor lay down without regret. It is a delicious book.

The _Every-Day Book_ appeared periodically through 1825 and 1826. The first volume was published as a book in May, 1826, with the following dedication:--

TO

CHARLES LAMB, ESQ.

DEAR L----

Your letter to me, within the first two months from the
commencement of the present work, approving my notice of St. Chad's
Well, and your afterwards daring to publish me your "friend," with
your "proper name" annexed, I shall never forget. Nor can I forget
your and Miss Lamb's sympathy and kindness when glooms outmastered
me; and that your pen spontaneously sparkled in the book, when my
mind was in clouds and darkness. These "trifles," as each of you
would call them, are benefits scored upon my heart; and

I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME,
TO YOU AND MISS LAMB,
WITH AFFECTIONATE RESPECT,
W. HONE.

_May 5, 1826._