Act IV., Scene 3, lines 23-40.

Page 73, line 3. _The Angel in Milton._

Made so adorn for they delight the more, So awful, that with honour thou may'st love Thy mate, who sees when thou art seen least wise.

_Paradise Lost_, VIII., 576-578.

Page 73, line 10. _An ancestor_. This punctilious hero may have been an ancestor of the Plumers, of Blakesware. See the _Elia_ essay on "Blakesmoor, in H----shire."

Page 73, line 7 from foot. _A waistcoat that had been mine_. The clothes of his clients became the hangman's perquisites. In Lamb's letter to Bernard Barton concerning Thurtell (January 9, 1824) this subject is again played with.

The present essay led to some amusing speculation in the next number of _The Reflector_, signed M., as to the origin of Jack Ketch. Some of the questions propounded to Pensilis are almost in Lamb's own manner:--

Supposing the race of Ketches to be extinct, what _cross_ does Pensilis think necessary to re-produce the breed? I have a very pretty knack myself at guessing what mixtures of different bloods will generate the ordinary professions of life; as a judge, an alderman, a bishop, &c., &c. but shall be happy to defer to his superior knowledge in this particular experiment of the art. Your correspondent, no doubt, is aware, how many generations it will frequently take a family, who value themselves upon their exterior, to wear out any little deformity; as, for instance, a snub nose, or a long chin. I could mention one noble family, whom it has cost a dozen intermarriages with the yeomanry, to introduce a stouter pair of legs among them; and another, which has been obliged to go through a course of milk-maids, to throw a little colour into their cheeks. Has your correspondent ever considered in what term of years a spirit of Ketchicism may be introduced into a family; and conversely, in how many generations the milk of human kindness may be instilled into, what Burke would call, a pure, unsophisticated dephlegmated, defecated _Ketch_?

Page 74. ON THE DANGER OF CONFOUNDING MORAL WITH PERSONAL DEFORMITY.

_The Reflector_, No. II. Reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.

Page 79, line 16. _The tales of our nursery_. In his _Elia_ essay "Dream Children" Lamb recalls his grandmother's narration of the old story of the "Children in the Wood."

Page 79, lines 20-21. _Mrs. Radcliffe ... Mr. Monk Lewis._ The popularity of Mrs. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), whose _Mysteries of Udolpho_ appeared in 1794, and of Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818), whose rival exercise in grisly romance, _The Monk_, was published in 1795, was then (1811) still considerable, although on the wane.

* * * * *

Page 80. ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING FROM PROPER NAMES.

_The Reflector_, No. II., 1811. Not reprinted by Lamb.

This paper is known to be Lamb's because he tells the story, in much the same words, in a letter to Wordsworth dated February 1, 1806. The young man who made the mistake of confusing Spencer and Spenser was a brother of Coleridge's Mary Evans. The Hon. William Robert Spencer (1769-1834), the second son of the third Duke of Marlborough, was a Society poet well enough known in his day--the first decade of the last century. His only poem that has survived is "Beth Gelert," a ballad often included in children's poetry books.

In Lamb's _Letters_ the poet Spenser is usually spelt Spencer.

* * * * *

Page 81. ON THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF HOGARTH.

_The Reflector_, No. III., 1811. The title there ran: "On the Genius and Character of Hogarth; with some Remarks on a Passage in the Writings of the late Mr. Barry." The article was signed L. It was reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.

Many of Hogarth's pictures, framed in black, hung round Lamb's sitting-room in his various homes. In 1817 Mary Lamb, writing to Dorothy Wordsworth, says that the Hogarths have been taken down from the walls and pasted into a book, but there is proof that some at any rate were framed both at Islington and Enfield.

Hazlitt in his _Sketches of the Principal Picture-galleries in England_, 1824, wrote, "Of the pictures in the _Rake's Progress_ we shall not here say anything ... because they have already been criticised by a writer, to whom we could add nothing, in a paper which ought to be read by every lover of Hogarth and of English genius." The reference was to Lamb's essay.

Page 82, line 1. _Old-fashioned house in ----shire_. Lamb refers again to Blakesware, in Hertfordshire. In a letter to Southey, Oct. 31, 1799, Lamb mentions the Blakesware Hogarths. This would suggest that Hogarth was the first artist that he knew, so many of his recollections dating from the old Hertfordshire days.

Page 84, line 1. _Kent, or Caius_. See "Table Talk," pages 401-2 of the present volume, for an amplification of this passage many years later. Lamb's version of "Lear" in _Tales from Shakespear_, 1807, has similar praise of Kent.

Page 84, last line. _Ferdinand Count Fathom_. See Chapter XXVII. of Smollett's _Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom_, 1754:--

When he beheld the white cliffs of Albion, his heart throbbed with all the joy of a beloved son, who, after a tedious and fatiguing voyage, reviews the chimnies of his father's house: he surveyed the neighbouring coast of England with fond and longing eyes, like another Moses reconnoitring the land of Canaan from the top of mount Pisgah; and to such a degree of impatience was he inflamed by the sight, that instead of proceeding to Calais, he resolved to take his passage directly from Boulogne, even if he should hire a vessel for the purpose.

Page 88. _Footnote_. _Somewhere in his [Reynolds'] lectures_. The passage is in the fourteenth of the _Discourses on Painting_--on Gainsborough:--

After this admirable artist [Hogarth] had spent the greater part of his life in an active, busy, and, we may add, successful attention to the ridicule of life; after he had invented a new species of dramatic painting, in which probably he will never be equalled, and had stored his mind with infinite materials to explain and illustrate the domestic and familiar scenes of common life, which were generally, and ought to have been always, the subject of his pencil; he very imprudently, or rather presumptuously, attempted the great historical style, for which his previous habits had by no means prepared him: he was indeed so entirely unacquainted with the principles of this style, that he was not even aware that any artificial preparation was at all necessary. It is to be regretted, that any part of the life of such a genius should be fruitlessly employed. Let his failure teach us not to indulge ourselves in the vain imagination, that by a momentary resolution we can give either dexterity to the hand, or a new habit to the mind.

Page 95, line 10. _Children's books_. _The Reflector_ version added, "or the tale of Carlo the Dog."

Page 97, line 8 from foot. _With Dr. Swift_. The page opposite the title of the _Tale of a Tub_ contains a (fictitious) list of "Treatises writ by the same author." The fifth of these is "A Panegyric upon the World." It is probable that Lamb had this in mind.

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Page 101. ON THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE THEATRES.

_The Reflector_, No. III., 1811. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Lamb omits to say that he joined in the hissing of his farce, "Mr. H.," on the unhappy night of December 10, 1806. In its ill fortune he seems always to have taken a kind of humorous sympathetic pride. When he printed the play at the end of his _Works_, 1818, he prefixed a quotation from Hazlitt's essay on "Great and Little Things," of which this is a portion:--

Mr. H.---- thou wert DAMNED. Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that announced thy appearance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of persons asking one another if they would go to see Mr. H.----, and answering that they would certainly; but before night the gaiety, not of the author, but of his friends, and the town, was eclipsed, for thou wert DAMNED!

Writing to Manning concerning the play's failure, Lamb said:--"Damn 'em, how they hissed! It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring sometimes, like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that hiss'd me into madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God should give his favourite children, men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with, and that they should turn them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent labours of their fellow-creatures who are desirous to please them!"

Page 101, line 3 of essay. _That memorable season_, 1806-1807. Lamb here exaggerates. It is true that ten new pieces were tried at Drury Lane in the season mentioned; but five were successful, and Monk Lewis's "Adelgitha," the only tragedy, could hardly be called a failure. Of the remaining four plays which failed, Holcroft's "Vindictive Man" was the most notable.

Page 101, line 9 of essay. _The Clerk of Chatham_.

_Cade._ Dost thou use to write thy name? or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest plain-dealing man?

_Clerk of Chatham._ Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up that I can write my name.

_All._ He hath confessed: away with him! he's a villain and a traitor.

_Cade._ Away with him, I say! hang him with his pen and ink-horn about his neck.

"II. Henry VI.," Act IV., Scene 2, lines 109-117.

Page 101, line 7 from foot. "_The Vindictive Man_." This was the comedy by Thomas Holcroft, Lamb's friend, the failure of which occurred a few nights before that of "Mr. H." Lamb describes the luckless performance in a letter to Manning dated December 5, 1806.

Page 102, line 5. "_Our nonsense did not ... suit their nonsense_." From Burnet's _History of His Own Times_, Vol. II.: "He [Charles II.] told me he had a chaplain that was a very honest man, but a very great blockhead, to whom he had given a living in Suffolk, that was full of that sort of people: he had gone about among them from house to house, though he could not imagine what he could say to them, for, he said, he was a very silly fellow, but that he believed his nonsense suited their nonsense; yet he had brought them all to church: and, in reward of his diligence, he had given him a bishopric in Ireland." (A note by Swift states the cleric to be Bishop Woolly of Clonfert.)

Page 102, line 25. _A Syren Catalani._ Angelica Catalani (1779-1849), one of the most beautiful of all singers.

Page 104, line 19. _The O.P. differences._ The O.P.--Old Prices--Riots raged in 1809. On September 18 of that year the new Covent Garden Theatre was opened under the management of John Philip Kemble and Charles Kemble, with a revised price list. The opposition to this revision was so determined that "Macbeth," with John Philip Kemble as Macbeth, and Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, was played practically in dumb show, and in the end the theatre was closed again for a while. The battle was waged not only by fists but by pamphlets. After two months' fighting a compromise was effected.

Page 105, line 17. _Obstinate, in John Bunyan._ At the beginning of the _Pilgrim's Progress_. It was not Obstinate, however, but Christian who put his fingers in his ears. Obstinate pursued and caught him. Lamb made the same mistake again in some verses to Bernard Barton.

A club of hissed authors existed in Paris in the 1870's. Flaubert, Daudet and Zola were members.

* * * * *

Page 107. ON BURIAL SOCIETIES; AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER.

_Reflector_, No. III., 1811. The letter there begins "Sir." Printed again in part, in _The Yellow Dwarf_, January 17, 1818. Reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.

Page 110. _The following short Essay._ "The Character of an Undertaker" is, of course, Lamb's own. Sable is the undertaker in Sir Richard Steele's "Funeral; or, Grief à la Mode," 1702. Two of his remarks run thus: "There is often nothing more ... deeply Joyful than a Young Widow in her Weeds and Black Train," and "The poor Dead are deliver'd to my Custody ... not to do them Honour, but to satisfy the Vanity or Interest of their Survivors."

* * * * *

Page 112. ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE.

Printed in _The Reflector_, No. IV. (1811), under the title "Theatralia, No. I. On Garrick, and Acting; and the Plays of Shakespeare, considered with reference to their fitness for Stage-Representation." Reprinted in the _Works_, 1818.

At the close of the _Reflector_ article Lamb wrote: "I have hitherto confined my observation to the Tragic parts of Shakespeare; in some future Number I propose to extend this inquiry to the Comedies." _The Reflector_ ending with the fourth number, the project was not carried out. From time to time, however, throughout his life, Lamb returned incidentally to Shakespearian criticism, as in several essays in the present volume, and the _Elia_ essay "The Old Actors," with its masterly analysis of the character of Malvolio. David Garrick died in 1779, just before Lamb's fourth birthday. Lamb's father often talked of him.

Page 113, line 6. _"To paint fair Nature," etc._ These lines on Garrick's monument, which have been corrected from the stone, were by Samuel Jackson Pratt (1749-1814), the same author whose _Gleanings_ Lamb described in a letter to Southey in 1798 as "a contemptible book, a wretched assortment of vapid feelings." Pratt's lines on Garrick were chosen in place of a prose epitaph written by Edmund Burke.

Page 114, line 23. _Mr. K._ John Philip Kemble (1757-1823), who first appeared as Hamlet in London at Drury Lane, September 30, 1783.

Page 114, line 24. _Mrs. S._ Mrs. Siddons, John Philip Kemble's sister (1755-1831). Her regular stage career ended on June 29, 1812, when she played Lady Macbeth. Her first part in London was Portia on December 29, 1775. Lamb admired her greatly. As early as 1794 he wrote, with Coleridge's collaboration, a sonnet on the impression which Mrs. Siddons made upon him.

Page 118, line 4. _Banks and Lillo._ John Banks, a very inferior Restoration melodramatist. George Lillo (1693-1739), the author among other plays of "George Barnwell--The London Merchant; or The History of George Barnwell," 1731 (mentioned a little later), which held the stage for a century. The story, the original of which is to be found in the _Percy Reliques_, tells how George, an apprentice, robs his master and kills his uncle at the instigation of Millwood, an adventuress. Lamb's footnote (page 118) refers to the custom, which was of long endurance, of playing "George Barnwell" in the Christmas and Easter holidays as an object-lesson to apprentices.

Page 121, line 25. _The Hills and the Murphys and the Browns._ Dr. John Hill (1716?-1775), the herbalist, controversialist, and miscellaneous writer, who quarrelled with Garrick. In _The Reflector_ Lamb had written the Hooles. It was changed to Hills afterwards. Hoole would be John Hoole (1727-1803), translator of Tasso and the author of some turgid tragedies, who had been in his time an India House clerk. Arthur Murphy (1727-1805), actor and author, who wrote, in addition to many plays and books, a _Life of Garrick_ (1801). The Rev. John Brown (1715-1766), the author of "Barbarossa" and "Athelstane," in both of which Garrick acted.

Page 122, line 8 from foot. _Mr. C._ G. F. Cooke. See above.

Page 123, line 25. _Glenalvon._ In Home's "Douglas." Lamb wrote an early poem on this tragedy, which seems to have so dominated his youthful imagination that when in 1795-1796 he was for a while in confinement he believed himself at times to be young Norval.

Page 127, line 12. _A ghost by chandelier light_ ... It should perhaps be borne in mind that in 1811, and for many years after, the stage was still lighted by candles, so that the regulation of light, which can be effected with such nicety on the modern stage, was then impossible. This is especially to be remembered with regard to such details as the presentation of the Witches in "Macbeth." It would be simple enough, with our electric switchboard, to frighten a nervous child in that scene to-day.

Page 129, line 3. _Webb._ Webb was a theatrical robemaker at 98 Chancery Lane.

* * * * *

Page 130. SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER.

_The Reflector_, No. IV., 1812. _Works_, 1818. In _The Reflector_ the signature Y was appended to the introductory paragraphs.

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), the divine and historian. The passages selected by Lamb are identified in the notes to my large edition, the references being to _The Holy State_, 1642; _The History of the Worthies of England_, 1662; _A Pisgah-sight of Palestine and the Confines thereof, with the Histories of the Old and New Testaments acted thereon_, 1650; and _The Church History of Britain from the Birth of Jesus Christ until the year MDCXLVIII._, 1655. Lamb's transcriptions are, of course, not exact.

Page 135. _Footnote. Fuller's bird._ Lamb's friend Procter (Barry Cornwall) was also greatly impressed by this legend. His _English Songs_, 1832, contains a poem on the subject.

Page 137. _Footnote. Wickliffe's ashes._ Landor has a passage on this subject in his poem "On Swift joining Avon near Rugby." Wordsworth's fine sonnet, in the _Ecclesiastical Sketches_, Part II., may have been suggested by this very quotation in Lamb's essay:--

WICLIFFE

Once more the Church is seized with sudden fear, And at her call is Wicliffe disinhumed; Yea, his dry bones to ashes are consumed, And flung into the brook that travels near; Forthwith that ancient Voice which streams can hear, Thus speaks (that Voice which walks upon the wind, Though seldom heard by busy human kind)-- "As thou these ashes, little Brook! wilt bear Into the Avon, Avon to the tide Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas, Into main Ocean they, this deed accurst An emblem yields to friends and enemies How the bold Teacher's Doctrine, sanctified By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed."

When printed in _The Reflector_, in 1812, Lamb's footnote continued thus:--

"We are too apt to indemnify ourselves for some characteristic excellence we are kind enough to concede to a great author, by denying him every thing else. Thus Donne and Cowley, by happening to possess more wit and faculty of illustration than other men, are supposed to have been incapable of nature or feeling; they are usually opposed to such writers as Shenstone and Parnel; whereas in the very thickest of their conceits,--in the bewildering maze of their tropes and figures, a warmth of soul and generous feeling shines through, the 'sum' of which 'forty thousand' of those natural poets, as they are called, 'with all their quantity, could not make up.'--Without any intention of setting Fuller on a level with Donne or Cowley, I think the injustice which has been done him in the denial that he possesses any other qualities than those of a quaint and conceited writer, is of the same kind as that with which those two great Poets have been treated."

* * * * *

Page 138. EDAX ON APPETITE.

_The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811. _Works_, 1818.

Page 138, line 14 from foot. _The best of parents_. Lamb, of course, is not here autobiographical. His father was no clergyman.

Page 139, line 21. _Ventri natus_, _etc_. These nicknames may be roughly translated: _Ventri natus_, glutton-born; _ventri deditus_, gluttony-dedicated; _vesana gula_, greedy gullet; _escarum gurges_, sink of eatables; _dapibus indulgens_, feast-lover; _non dans fræna gulæ_, not curbing the gullet; _sectans lautæ fercula mensæ_, dainty-hunting.

Page 141, line 15. _Mandeville_. Bernard Mandeville (1670?-1733), whose _Fable of the Bees_, 1714, was one of Lamb's favourite books.

* * * * *

Page 145. _Hospita on the Immoderate Indulgence of the Palate_.

_The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811. _Works_, 1818. In _The Reflector_ this letter followed immediately upon that of Edax (see page 138). In his _Works_ Lamb reversed this order. In _The Reflector_ the following footnote was appended, signed _Ref._:--

To all appearance, the obnoxious visitor of HOSPITA can be no other than my inordinate friend EDAX, whose misfortunes are detailed, ore rotundo, in the preceding article. He will of course see the complaint that is made against him; but it can hardly be any benefit either to himself or his entertainers. The man's appetite is not a bad habit but a disease; and if he had not thought proper to relate his own story, I do not know whether it would have been altogether justifiable to be so amusing upon such a subject.

Page 147, second paragraph. _Mr. Malthus_. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), author of the _Essay on Population_, 1798. He wrote _On the High Price of Provisions_ in 1800.

* * * * *

Page 148. THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER.

_The Reflector_, No. IV., 1811. Signed L. B., possibly as the first and last letters of Lamb. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Page 153, line 12. _As Solomon says_. Defoe seems to be remembering Proverbs XXII. 7, and possibly Isaiah XXIV. 2.

Sixteen years later, in 1827, William Hone reprinted "The Good Clerk" in his _Table Book_, I., columns 562-567. The first half was given under its own title; the second half under this title, "Defoeana, No. I., The Tradesman;" followed by a kindred passage from _The Fable of the Bees_, to which the following note was appended, signed L.:--

"We have copied the above from Mandeville's _Fable of the Bees_, Edition 1725. How far, and in what way, the practice between the same parties differs at this day, we respectfully leave to our fair shopping friends, of this present year 1827, to determine."

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Page 153. MEMOIR OF ROBERT LLOYD.

_Gentleman's Magazine_, November, 1811. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Robert Lloyd (1778-1811) was a younger brother of Charles Lloyd, for a while Coleridge's pupil and Lamb's friend of the later nineties, with whom he collaborated in _Blank Verse,_ 1798. They were sons of Charles Lloyd, of Birmingham (1748-1828), the Quaker banker, philanthropist, and, in a quiet private way, a writer of verse (see _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_).

Robert Lloyd first met Lamb in 1797; he was then nineteen years old, an apprentice at Saffron Walden. He was inclined to morbidness, though not to the same extent as his brother Charles, and Lamb did what he could to get more health and contentment into him. In 1799 Robert Lloyd seems to have left his father's roof in a state of revolt, and to have settled with Lamb for a while. He returned home, however, and met Manning (who was then teaching Charles Lloyd mathematics at Cambridge), and, after drawing from Lamb several fine letters--notably upon Jeremy Taylor, and that upon Cooke from which I have quoted in the notes above--he passed out of his life until 1809, when, paying a short visit to London, he saw the Lambs again several times.

The autumn of 1811 was a sad one for the Lloyd family. Thomas Lloyd died on September 12, Caroline on October 15, and Robert on October 26. The _Gentleman's Magazine_ obituary just mentions Thomas and Caroline, and passes on to Robert. We know the article to be Lamb's from a letter from Charles Lloyd to Robert's widow, enclosing the memoir (which Lamb had sent to him), and adding, "If I loved him for nothing else, I should now love [Charles Lamb] for the affecting interest that he has taken in the memory of my dearest Brother and Friend."

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Page 154. CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD.

_The Philanthropist_, No. IX., 1813. _Some Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented Liquors_, 1814; second edition, 1818. _London Magazine_, August, 1822. _Last Essays of Elia_, second edition, 1835.

The first appearance of this paper was in a quarterly magazine entitled _The Philanthropist_; or, _Repository for Hints and Suggestions calculated to promote the Comfort and Happiness of Man_. Vol. III., No. IX., 1813. It was there unsigned and addressed "To the Editor of _The Philanthropist_." The editor of this magazine was William Allen (1770-1843), the Quaker, and his chief associate was James Mill, the Father of John Stuart Mill. Lamb's friend, Basil Montagu (1770-1851), was among the contributors; and another prominent name was that of Benjamin Meggot Forster (1764-1829), who, like Montagu, opposed capital punishment, and was zealous in the cause of chimney-sweepers.

In its original _Philanthropist_ form the essay differs from its later appearances. Concerning the differences I should like to quote from an interesting article by Mr. Thomas Hutchinson in _The Athenæum_ of August 16, 1902:--

The text of the "Confessions," as it stands in _The Philanthropist_, bears evident traces of Mill's editorial hand; the verbal changes smack of those precise and literal modes of thought and expression which Lamb found so uncongenial in the Scotsman. "They seemed to have something noble _about_ them," writes Lamb of the friends of 1801. "But moral qualities are not external to us, they are resident _in_ us," objects Mill; and so "about" is struck out and "in" substituted. "Avoid the bottle as you would fly your greatest destruction," says Lamb. "But," interposes the precisian, "the idea of _destruction_ does not admit of _more_ or _less_; besides, 'to fly' is properly a verb intransitive"--and thus the sentence is rewritten: "... fly _from certain_ destruction." "The pain of the self-denial is _all one_"--"is _equal_," substitutes the Scot. "I scarce knew what it was to _ail anything_"--"to have an ailment," corrects the lover of plain words; and so on. Of the sixth paragraph of the essay only the opening sentence ("Why should I hesitate," etc.) is suffered to stand. The rest is cancelled--doubtless as at variance with Utilitarian views. Again the close of the fourteenth paragraph ("But he is too hard for us," etc., onwards) is struck out--either by Mill, as too broadly implying the existence of the "muckle deil," or by Allen, as too flippant an allusion to that fearsome personage. Lastly, the second paragraph is wanting and the third reduced by half, the conclusion (from "Trample not," etc., on), in which the miracle of the raising of Lazarus is referred to, being omitted.

I cannot, however, quite accept Mr. Hutchinson's theory that Lamb wrote the "Confessions" as a joke at the expense of the seriousness of the Quaker editor and his Benthamite assistant. Mr. Hutchinson writes: "We can fancy with what glee the sly humorist, who found the world as it was so lovable and good to live in, prepared to hoax the fussy John Amend-All of Plough Court and his fiery lieutenant, James Mill," and he adds later, "An amusing feature of the 'Confessions' is the introduction, twice over, of the sacred Benthamite catchword, 'Springs of Action,' and, once, of its equivalent, the 'Springs of the Will,' a plausible device to bribe the judgment of the editors." But Lamb's jokes were always jokes, and it is difficult, sitting down to these "Confessions" with what anticipation we will of humour or whimsicality, to rise from them in anything but sadness. They are too real for a "flam." Of this, however, more below.

The "Confessions" made their second appearance in Basil Montagu's collection of arguments in favour of teetotalism--_Some Enquiries into the Effects of Fermented Liquors_. By a Water Drinker. 1814; and second edition, 1818. This volume was divided into sections, Lamb's contribution being ranged under the question, "Do Fermented Liquors Contribute to Moral Excellence?" Montagu's book was reprinted in 1841, when Lamb's contribution was acknowledged as from the _Essays of Elia_ by Charles Lamb (more properly the _Last Essays_). Lamb's "Confessions" were also reprinted separately in a series of tracts called "Beacon Lights," in 1854, as being a true statement of their unhappy author's case, under the title, "Charles Lamb's Confessions." This misrepresentation led to some correspondence in the press, and the tract was withdrawn, a new edition being substituted in 1856 with the harrowing story of poor Hartley Coleridge in the place of Lamb's essay.

The "Confessions" were reprinted in the _London Magazine_, August, 1822, under the following circumstances. In the summer of 1822 Lamb and his sister visited the Kenneys at Versailles--an absence which interrupted the regular course of the _Elia_ essays. The Editor therefore reprinted one or two of Lamb's old papers, the first being these "Confessions," advising his readers of his action in a note in which Lamb's own hand is plainly apparent. This is the note:--

"_Reprints of_ ELIA.--Many are the sayings of _Elia_, painful and frequent his lucubrations, set forth for the most part (such his modesty!) without a name, scattered about in obscure periodicals and forgotten miscellanies. From the dust of some of these, it is our intention, occasionally, to revive a Tract or two, that shall seem worthy of a better fate; especially, at a time like the present, when the pen of our industrious Contributor, engaged in a laborious digest of his recent Continental Tour, may haply want the leisure to expatiate in more miscellaneous speculations. We have been induced, in the first instance, to re-print a Thing, which he put forth in a friend's volume some years since, entitled the Confessions of a Drunkard, seeing that Messieurs the Quarterly Reviewers have chosen to embellish their last dry pages with fruitful quotations therefrom; adding, from their peculiar brains, the gratuitous affirmation, that they have reason to believe that the describer (in his delineations of a drunkard forsooth!) partly sate for his own picture. The truth is, that our friend had been reading among the Essays of a contemporary, who has perversely been confounded with him, a paper in which _Edax_ (or the _Great Eater_) humorously complaineth of an inordinate appetite; and it struck him, that a better paper--of deeper interest, and wider usefulness--might be made out of the imagined experiences of a _Great Drinker_. Accordingly he set to work, and with that mock fervor, and counterfeit earnestness, with which he is too apt to over-realise his descriptions, has given us--a frightful picture indeed--but no more resembling the man _Elia_, than the fictitious _Edax_ may be supposed to identify itself with Mr. L., its author. It is indeed a compound extracted out of his long observations of the effects of drinking upon all the world about him; and this accumulated mass of misery he hath centered (as the custom is with judicious essayists) in a single figure. We deny not that a portion of his own experiences may have passed into the picture, (as who, that is not a washy fellow, but must at some times have felt the after-operation of a too generous cup?)--but then how heightened! how exaggerated!--how little within the sense of the Review, where a part, in their slanderous usage, must be understood to stand for the whole!--but it is useless to expostulate with this Quarterly slime, brood of Nilus, watery heads with hearts of jelly, spawned under the sign of Aquarius, incapable of Bacchus, and therefore cold, washy, spiteful, bloodless.----Elia shall string them up one day, and show their colours--or rather how colourless and vapid the whole fry--when he putteth forth his long promised, but unaccountably hitherto delayed, Confessions of a Water-drinker."

The remarks in the _Quarterly Review_, to which Lamb very naturally objected, and which are believed to have been written by Dr. Robert Gooch (1784-1830), a friend of Southey, had occurred in an article, in the number for April, 1822, on Reid's _Essays on Hypochondriasis and other Nervous Affections_. There, in a passage introducing quotations from Lamb's "Confessions of a Drunkard," the reviewer says:--

In a collection of tracts "On the Effects of Spirituous Liquors," by an eminent living barrister, there is a paper entitled the "Confessions of a Drunkard," which affords a fearful picture of the consequences of intemperance, and which we have reason to know is a true tale.

It was, we may suppose, as a kind of challenge to this statement that Lamb authorised the republication of his "Confessions." It cannot be denied, however, that the circumstantiality of the story gave a handle to the _Quarterly's_ theory. For example, twelve years before 1813 (when the essay was probably first written), Lamb had completed his twenty-sixth year. He was known to have an impediment in his speech. He was known also to have been in bondage to tobacco. The two sets of friends (see pp. 156 and 157) correspond to Fenwick, Fell & Co., and the Burney whist players.

If a portion of the "Confessions" was true, it was more likely to be true in 1812-1813 than at any time in Lamb's life. He was then between thirty-seven and thirty-nine, a critical age. He had apparently abandoned most of his literary ambition and was beginning the least productive period of his life; if a man is at all given to seeking alcoholic stimulant he resorts to it more when his ambition sleeps than when it is lively. In 1812-1813 Lamb was hard worked at the East India House; and with the failure of _The Reflector_, to which he was an important contributor, immediately behind him, the failure of _John Woodvil_ (in which he had believed) more remotely behind him, his children's book vein dry, and little but office routine and disappointment to look forward to, he may conceivably have indulged now and then, after a festive night with his friends, in some such gloomy thoughts as are expressed in this essay. Crabb Robinson, indeed, who saw much of Lamb at this season, records in his unpublished Diary that the "Confessions" seemed to him sadly true. Robinson, however, was disposed to be rather a severe judge of any weakness, and we may perhaps discount such an impression; but the fact remains that among Lamb's friends there was one who, wishing him all happiness, looked on the "Confessions" in this way.

Yet whatever proportion of truth may have been in the "Confessions" when they were written (possibly when Mary Lamb was ill and hope was with Lamb at its lowest) Lamb soon recovered. We may feel confident of that. He remained to the end conscious of the stimulating effect of wine and spirits and too easily influenced by them, as are so many persons of sensitive habit and quick imagination: that is all. As Talfourd wrote:--

Drinking with him [Lamb], except so far as it cooled a feverish thirst, was not a sensual but an intellectual pleasure; it lighted up his fading fancy, enriched his humour, and impelled the struggling thought or beautiful image into day.

One of the best proofs of the untruth of the "Confessions" is urged by Charles Robert Leslie, the painter, and it becomes particularly cogent when we remember the case of Tommy Bye, described by Lamb in two of his letters, who was reduced to a paltry income at the East India House as a punishment for insobriety. Leslie wrote in his _Autobiographical Recollections_, 1860:--

I have noticed that Lamb sometimes did himself injustice by his odd sayings and actions, and he now and then did the same by his writings. His "Confessions of a Drunkard" greatly exaggerate any habits of excess he may ever have indulged. The regularity of his attendance at the India House, and the liberal manner in which he was rewarded for that attendance, proved that he never could have been a drunkard. Well, indeed, would it be for the world if such extraordinary virtues as he possessed were often found in company with so very few faults.

In all modern editions of Lamb the "Confessions of a Drunkard" are included with the _Last Essays of Elia_. But Lamb did not himself originally place them there. Apparently his intention was not to reprint them after their appearance in the _London Magazine_ in 1822. When, however, the _Last Essays of Elia_ was published, in 1833, the paper called "A Death-Bed" was objected to by Mrs. Randal Norris, as bearing too publicly upon her poverty. When, therefore, the next edition was preparing, "A Death-Bed" was taken out, and the "Confessions" put in its place, but whether Lamb made the substitution, or whether it was decided upon after his death, I do not know.

Page 160. _Footnote. Poor M----._ Probably George Morland, who died a drunkard in 1804. In _The Life of George Morland_, by George Dawe (Lamb's "Royal Academician"), we read: "When he [Morland] arose in the morning his hand trembled so as to render him incapable of guiding the pencil, until he had recruited his spirits with his fatal remedy."

* * * * *

Page 162. RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.

This article was first printed in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for June, 1813, and in the supplement for that year, under the title "On Christ's Hospital and the Character of the Christ's Hospital Boys." In that place it had the following opening, which, having lost its timeliness, was discarded when in 1818 the essay was printed in the _Works_:--

"A great deal has been said about the Governors of this Hospital abusing their right of presentation, by presenting the children of opulent parents to the Institution. This may have been the case in an instance or two; and what wonder, in an establishment consisting, in town and country, of upwards of a thousand boys! But I believe there is no great danger of an abuse of this sort ever becoming very general. There is an old quality in human nature, which will perpetually present an adequate preventive to this evil. While the coarse blue coat and the yellow hose shall continue to be the costume of the school, (and never may modern refinement innovate upon the venerable fashion!) the sons of the Aristocracy of this country, cleric or laic, will not often be obtruded upon this seminary.

"I own, I wish there was more room for such complaints. I cannot but think that a sprinkling of the sons of respectable parents among them has an admirable tendency to liberalize the whole mass; and that to the great proportion of Clergymen's children in particular which are to be found among them it is owing, that the foundation has not long since degenerated into a mere Charity-school, as it must do, upon the plan so hotly recommended by some reformists, of recruiting its ranks from the offspring of none but the very lowest of the people.

"I am not learned enough in the history of the Hospital to say by what steps it may have departed from the letter of its original charter; but believing it, as it is at present constituted, to be a great practical benefit, I am not anxious to revert to first principles, to overturn a positive good, under pretence of restoring something which existed in the days of Edward the Sixth, when the face of every thing around us was as different as can be from the present. Since that time the opportunities of instruction to the very lowest classes (of as much instruction as may be beneficial and not pernicious to them) have multiplied beyond what the prophetic spirit of the first suggester of this charity[64] could have predicted, or the wishes of that holy man have even aspired to. There are parochial schools, and Bell's and Lancaster's, with their arms open to receive every son of ignorance, and disperse the last fog of uninstructed darkness which dwells upon the land. What harm, then, if in the heart of this noble City there should be left one receptacle, where parents of rather more liberal views, but whose time-straitened circumstances do not admit of affording their children that better sort of education which they themselves, not without cost to their parents, have received, may without cost send their sons? For such Christ's Hospital unfolds her bounty.

"To comfort, &c."

[64] "Bishop Ridley, in a Sermon preached before King Edward the Sixth."

Concerning this original opening a few words are necessary. Lamb had found the impetus to write his article in the public charges of favouritism and the undue distribution of influence, that were made by Robert Waithman (1764-1833), the reformer, against the governors of Christ's Hospital, in an open letter to those gentlemen in 1808. The newspapers naturally had much to say on the question, which was for some time a prominent one. _The Examiner_, for example, edited by Leigh Hunt--himself an old Christ's Hospitaller--spoke thus strongly (December 25, 1808): "That hundreds of unfortunate objects have applied in vain for admission is sufficiently notorious; and that many persons with abundant means of educating and providing for their children and relatives have obtained their admission into the School is also equally well known." The son of the Vicar of Edmonton, Mr. Dawson Warren, and a boy named Carysfoot Proby, whose father had two livings as well as his own and his wife's fortune, were the chief scapegoats.

Coleridge also wrote an article on the subject, which appeared in _The Courier_--a vigorous denial of Waithman's contention that the Hospital was intended for the poorest children, and the expression of a wish that the governors would permit no influence to change its aforetime policy. At the same time Coleridge expressed disapproval of the admission of boys whose fathers were in easy circumstances.

The _Gentleman's Magazine_ version of Lamb's essay had one other difference from that of 1818. The second paragraph of the essay as it now stands did not then end at the words "would do well to go a little out of their way to see" (page 163). At the word "see" was a colon, and then came this passage:--

"let those judge, I say, who have compared this scene with the abject countenances, the squalid mirth, the broken-down spirit, and crouching, or else fierce and brutal deportment to strangers, of the very different sets of little beings who range round the precincts of common orphan schools and places of charity."

Lamb's essay was also printed in a quaint little book entitled _A Brief History of Christ's Hospital from its Foundation by King Edward the Sixth to the Present Time_, by J. I. W[ilson], published in 1820. It is there credited to Mr. Charles Lambe. In 1835, it was reissued as a pamphlet by some of Lamb's schoolfellows and friends "in testimony of their respect for the author, and of their regard for the Institution."

Christ's Hospital was founded in 1552 by Edward VI. in response to a sermon on charity by Ridley; his charge to Ridley being:--

To take out of the streets all the fatherless children and other poor men's children that were not able to keep them, and to bring them to the late dissolved house of the Greyfriars, which they devised to be a Hospital for them, where they should have meat, drink, and clothes, lodging and learning, and officers to attend upon them.

Later, this intention was somewhat modified, with the purpose of benefiting rather the reduced or embarrassed parents than the very poor.

The London history of the school is now ended. The boys have gone to Sussex, where, near Horsham, the new buildings have been erected, and the old Newgate Street structure has been demolished to make room for offices, warehouses, and an extension of St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

John Lamb's appeal for his son Charles to be received into Christ's Hospital is dated March 30, 1781, and it states that the petitioner has "a Wife and three Children, and he finds it difficult to maintain and educate his Family without some Assistance." One of the children, John Lamb jr., then aged nearly eighteen, should, however, have been practically self-supporting. The presentation was made by Timothy Yeats, a friend of Samuel Salt, who himself signed the necessary bond for £100 and made himself responsible for the boy's discharge. Lamb was admitted July 17, 1782, and clothed October 9, 1782; he remained until November 23, 1789.

The notes that follow apply solely to the few points in the text that call for remark. More exhaustive comments on Lamb and Christ's Hospital will be found in the notes to the _Elia_ essay on the same subject.

Page 163, line 23. _The old Grey Friars._ This monastery had been suppressed by Henry VIII. It was reinhabited by the Christ's Hospital boys; but was in great part destroyed in the Fire of London, the cloisters alone remaining. The other old part of Christ's Hospital, as this generation knows it, dates from after the Fire.

Page 165, line 9 from foot. _Philip Quarll's Island_. One of the imitations of _Robinson Crusoe_. The full title ran: _The Hermit: or the unparalleled sufferings and surprising adventures of Mr. Philip Quarll, an Englishman, who was lately discovered by Mr. Dorrington, a Bristol Merchant, upon an uninhabited island in the South Seas; where he has lived above Fifty Years, without any human assistance, still continues to reside, and will not come away, 1727._ Lamb refers again to these excursions in his _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers."

Page 168, line 8 from foot. _The Rev. James Boyer._ Lamb writes more fully of his old schoolmaster in the _Elia_ essay. Boyer was elected 1776, and retired in 1799, when the governors presented him with a staff. He died in 1814.

Page 170, line 4 from foot. _Grecians._ Lamb writes more fully of the Grecians in his _Elia_ essay. He was himself never more than Deputy-Grecian.

Page 171, line 4 from foot. _William Wales._ William Wales was appointed 1776, and died 1798. The King's Boys are now called "Mathemats," i.e., Members of the Royal Mathematical Foundation for Sea Service. Leigh Hunt says of William Wales in his _Autobiography_: "He was a good man, of plain, simple manners, with a heavy large person and a benign countenance. When he was at Otaheite, the natives played him a trick while bathing, and stole his small-clothes; which we used to think a liberty scarcely credible."

Page 172, line 5 from foot. _Processions ... at Easter._ The boys when in London visited the Lord Mayor on Easter Tuesday.

Page 173, line 4. _St. Matthew's day._ September 21. Speech Day is now at the end of the Summer Term.

Page 173, line 8. _Barnes ... Markland ... Camden._ Joshua Barnes (1654-1712), Greek scholar and antiquary; Jeremiah Markland (1693-1776), Greek scholar; and William Camden (1551-1623), the antiquary--all Christ's Hospital boys.

Page 173, line 18. _The carol._ I cannot give the words of this particular carol. Mr. E. H. Pearce, the latest historian of Christ's Hospital, tells me that it was probably not a school carol peculiar to Christ's Hospital, like the Easter anthems (which were composed annually), but an ordinary Christmas hymn. "An old Crug," _i.e._, Old Christ's Hospitaller, wrote to _Notes and Queries_, December 22, 1855, asking if any reader could supply the missing stanzas of a Christmas carol which the Blue Coat boys used to sing fifty years before. This was one stanza (from memory):--

The wise men of the Eastern globe did spy A blazing star in the bright glittering sky; And well they knew it fully did portend, Christ came to the earth for some great end.

* * * * *

Page 174. TABLE-TALK IN "THE EXAMINER."

In 1813 Leigh Hunt added to his paper, _The Examiner_, a more or less regular collection of notes under the heading "Table-Talk." At first they were unsigned, but on May 30 he announced that each contributor would in future have his own mark. From unmistakable evidence--for example, the similarity between the "Playhouse Memoranda" on page 184, and the _Elia_ essay "My First Play"--we may confidently consider Lamb to be the author of all those pieces signed, like that, ‡, seven of which are here included. The first contribution thus signed was the note on "Reynolds and Leonardo da Vinci," on page 174, usually printed in editions of Lamb's works as "The Reynolds Gallery."

Lamb had other signatures in _The Examiner_. The Dramatic Criticisms and Reviews of Books, pages 217 to 234, were signed with four stars; the notice of "Don Giovanni in London" (see page 215) was signed †, and "Valentine's Day" (in _Elia_) was signed * * *.

Page 174. I.--REYNOLDS AND LEONARDO DA VINCI.

_The Examiner_, June 6, 1813.

Lamb had very little admiration for Sir Joshua Reynolds. See also his remarks in the essay on "Hogarth," page 88 for example.

Page 174, line 1 of essay. _The Reynolds' Gallery._ The exhibition of 142 of Sir Joshua Reynolds' works, held in 1813 at the Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, afterwards the British Institution. The Marlborough Club now stands on its site. Reynolds had died in 1792.

Page 174, line 9 of essay. _Mrs. Anne Clark._ The notorious Mary Anne Clarke (1776-1852), the mistress of Frederick, Duke of York. After keeping London society in a state of ferment for some years, by reason of her disclosures and claims, she was, in 1813, condemned to nine months' imprisonment for libel. Lamb has a very humorous passage about this lady in a letter to Manning on March 28, 1809. Reynolds, it need hardly be said, did not paint her, since, when he died, she was but sixteen and a nobody.--Kitty Fisher was Catherine Maria Fisher, who died in 1767, and was painted by Sir Joshua several times. A very notorious person in her early days; afterwards she married an M.P.

Page 174, line 7 from foot. _Mrs. Long._ Mrs. Long was Amelia Long, wife of Charles Long, afterwards first Baron Farnborough.--Reynolds painted a number of Infant Jupiters and Bacchuses. His "Infant Samuel" is well known. Few pictures of that time have been more often reproduced.

Page 176. II.--[THE NEW ACTING.]

_The Examiner_, July 18, 1813.

This note adds still another to Lamb's many remarks on the stage, and stands as a kind of trial sketch for the papers on "The Old Actors," which Lamb contributed to the _London Magazine_ nine years later. "The New Acting" is also noteworthy in containing Lamb's earliest praises of Miss Kelly, the favourite actress of his later years, of whom he always wrote so finely.

Page 176, line 4 of essay. _Parsons and Dodd._ William Parsons (1736-1795), the comedian. Foresight in Congreve's "Love for Love" was one of his best parts. James William Dodd (1740?-1796), famous for his Aguecheek, in "Twelfth Night," which Lamb extols in "The Old Actors."

Page 176, line 10 of essay. _Bannister and Dowton._ Two actors of a later generation. John Bannister (1760-1836), whom Lamb admired as Walter in Morton's "Children in the Wood," left the stage in 1815; William Dowton (1764-1851), famous as Falstaff, left the stage in 1836.

Page 176, line 6 from foot. _Russell's Jerry Sneak._ Samuel Thomas Russell (1769?-1845), celebrated for his Jerry Sneak in Foote's "Mayor of Garratt." Russell left the stage in 1842.

Page 177, line 8. _Liston's Lord Grizzle._ John Liston (1776?-1846), the comedian, whose bogus biography by Lamb will be found at page 292 of this volume. Lord Grizzle is a character in Fielding's "Tom Thumb."

Page 177, line 12. _Nicolaus Klimius._ Baron Holberg's _Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum_ was translated into English under the title _A Journey to the World Underground_, 1742. It describes the surprising subterranean adventures of a Norwegian divinity student.

Page 177, line 19. _Mrs. Mattocks, Miss Pope and Mrs. Jordan._ Isabella Mattocks (1746-1826), comedienne, took leave of the stage in 1808; Jane Pope (1742-1818), famous as Audrey in "As You Like It," retired in the same year; and Dorothea Jordan (1762-1816), the greatest comedienne of her time, left the London stage in 1814.

Page 177, line 24. _Mrs. Abingdon ... Mrs. Cibber, etc._ Frances Abington (1737-1815) left the stage in 1799. Mrs. Susannah Maria Cibber (1714-1766) and Anne (or Nance) Oldfield (1683-1730) were, of course, before Lamb's time.

Page 177, line 25. _Whole artillery of charms._ Lamb is here recalling Colley Cibber's account of Mrs. Bountiful's Melantha in _Marriage a la Mode_ in his _Apology_.

Page 177, line 34. _Miss Kelly._ Lamb's friend, Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882), of whom he wrote so much (see pages 217 to 223 of the present volume, and "Barbara S----" in _Elia_ essays. See also note to "Miss Kelly at Bath," page 486).

Page 177, at foot. _The Glovers ... Johnstons ... St. Legers_. Mrs. Julia Glover (1779-1850), the original Alhadra in Coleridge's "Remorse" in 1813. Mrs. Johnstone, a well-known Elvira in "Pizarro." She made her London début in 1797. Mrs. Saint Ledger (_née_ Williams) made her London début in 1799, and began well, but declined into pantomime.

Page 178, line 1. _Miss Candour_. Probably a misprint for Mrs. Candour in "The School for Scandal," a part created by Miss Pope.

Page 178. III.--[BOOKS WITH ONE IDEA IN THEM.]

_The Examiner_, July 18, 1813. Reprinted by Leigh Hunt in _The Indicator_, December 13, 1820, under the title of Table Talk, together with the notes on "Gray's _Bard_" and "Playhouse Memoranda," on pages 181 and 184 of the present volume. Leigh Hunt thus introduced these reprints:--

It has been a great relief to us during our illness (from which, we trust, we are now recovering) to find that the re-publication of some former pieces from other periodical works has not been disapproved. Being still compelled to make up our numbers in this way, we have the pleasure of supplying the greater part of the present one with some Table-Talk, with which a friend entertained us on a similar occasion a few years ago in _The Examiner_. To the reader who happens not to be acquainted with them they will be acceptable for very obvious reasons: those who remember them, will be glad to read them again; and as for ourselves, besides the other reasons for being gratified, we feel particular satisfaction in recalling to the author's memory as well as our own, some genuine morsels of writing which he appears to have forgotten.

Page 178, line 11., _Patrick's "Pilgrim." The Parable of the Pilgrim_, 1664, by Simon Patrick, Bishop of Ely (1626-1707), which bears a curious accidental likeness to Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_. Writing to Wordsworth, in 1815, Lamb says: "Did you ever read Charron on _Wisdom_ or Patrick's _Pilgrim_? If neither, you have two great pleasures to come." The particular passage quoted from Patrick is in one of Lamb's Commonplace Books.

Page 178, line 22. _Single-Speech Hamiltons_. William Gerard Hamilton (1729-1796). He entered Parliament in 1754, and made his famous maiden speech in 1755. It was not, however, by any means his only speech, although his nickname still prevails.

Page 178, line 24. _Killigrew's play_. "The Parson's Wedding," a comedy, by Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683). Lamb included this speech of the Fine Lady under the heading Facetiæ in his extracts from the Garrick plays in Hone's _Table Book_, 1827.

Page 178, line 32. _Charron on "Wisdom_." Two translations of the Sieur de Charron, _De la Sagesse_, might have been read by Lamb: Dean Stanhope's (1697) and Samson Lennard's (1612). Probably it was Lennard's, since the passage may be found on page 129 of his 1670 edition, a quarto, and page 145 in the 1640 edition, whereas in Stanhope it is page 371. Lennard's translation runs thus (Book I., Chap. 39):--

The action of planting and making man is shameful, and all the parts thereof; the congredients, the preparations, the instruments, and whatsoever serves thereunto is called and accounted shameful; and there is nothing more unclean, in the whole Nature of man. The action of destroying and killing him [is] honorable, and that which serves thereunto glorious: we guild it, we enrich it, we adorn ourselves with it, we carry it by our sides, in our hands, upon our shoulders. We disdain to go to the birth of man; every man runs to see him die, whether it be in his bed, or in some public place, or in the field. When we go about to make a man, we hide ourselves, we put out the candle, we do it by stealth. It is a glory and pomp to unmake a man, to kill himself; we light the candles to see him die, we execute him at high noon, we sound a trumpet, we enter the combat, and we slaughter him when the sun is at highest. There is but one way to beget, to make a man, a thousand and a thousand means, inventions, arts to destroy him. There is no reward, honour or recompense assigned to those that know how to encrease, to preserve human nature; all honour, greatness, riches, dignities, empires, triumphs, trophies are appointed for those that know how to afflict, trouble, destroy it.

Page 178, last line. _What could Pope mean?_

What made (say Montaigne, or more sage Charron) Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon?

Pope's _Moral Essays_, Ep. I., 87-88.

It has been held that Pope called Charron more sage because he somewhat mitigated the excessive fatalism (Pyrrhonism) of Montaigne.

Page 179. IV.--[A SYLVAN SURPRISE.]

_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Reprinted in _The Indicator_, January 3, 1821. We know it to be Lamb's by the signature ‡; also from a sentence in Leigh Hunt's essay on the "Suburbs of Genoa," in _The Literary Examiner_, August 23, 1823, where, speaking of an expected sight, he says: "C. L. could not have been more startled when he saw the chimney-sweeper reclining in Richmond meadows."

Page 179. V.--[STREET CONVERSATION.]

_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡.

Page 180. VI.--[A TOWN RESIDENCE.]

_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡.

This note is another contribution to Lamb's many remarks on London. Allsop, in his reminiscences of Lamb in his _Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge_, 1836, remarks:--

Somerset House, Whitehall Chapel (the old Banqueting Hall), the church at Limehouse and the new church at Chelsea, with the Bell house at Chelsea College, which always reminded him of Trinity College, Cambridge, were the objects most interesting to him [Lamb] in London.

Page 181. VII.--[GRAY'S "BARD."]

_The Examiner_, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡. Reprinted by Leigh Hunt under the above title in _The Indicator_, December 13, 1820. In the Appendix (pages 425-6) will be found other critical comments upon Gray, which I conjecture to be Lamb's.

Page 181, line 1 of essay. _The beard of Gray's bard._

Loose his beard, and hoary hair Stream'd like a meteor, to the troubled air.

_The Bard._

Gray himself noted the Miltonic anticipation of this line (see Gosse's edition, 1884). The lines Lamb quotes are from _Paradise Lost_, I., lines 536-537.

Page 181, line 6 of essay. _Heywood's old play._ "The Four 'Prentices of London," by Thomas Heywood. The speech is that of Turnus respecting the Persian Sophy. It is copied in one of Lamb's Commonplace Books.

Page 182. VIII.--[AN AMERICAN WAR FOR HELEN.]

_The Examiner_, September 26, 1813. Signed ‡. Reprinted under the above title by Leigh Hunt in _The Indicator_, January 3, 1821.

Page 182, line 1 of essay. _A curious volume._ Hazlitt's _Handbook to the Popular, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain_, 1867, gives the title as _Alexandri Fultoni Scoti Epigrammatum Libri Quimque_. Perth, 1679. 8vo.

Page 182, line 9. "_The master of a seminary ... at Islington._" This was the Rev. John Evans, a Baptist minister, whose school was in Pullin's Row, Islington. Gray's _Elegy_ was published as Lamb indicates in 1806. The headline covering the first three stanzas is "Interesting Silence."

Page 183. IX.--[DRYDEN AND COLLIER.]

_The Examiner_, September 26, 1813. Signed ‡.

Page 183, line 3. _Jeremy Collier._ Jeremy Collier (1650-1726), the nonjuror and controversialist. His _Essays upon Several Moral Subjects_,