Chapter 244

"W. H. goes on lecturing." Hazlitt was delivering a course of lectures on the English poets at the Surrey Institution.

"'Gentleman' said I." On another occasion Lamb, asked to give a toast, gave the best he knew--woodcock on toast. See also his toasts at Haydon's dinner. I do not know when or why the dinner was given to him; perhaps after the failure of "Mr. H."

"Gentleman concern'd in the Stamp office." See note to the preceding letter.

"Our red letter days." Lamb repeats the complaint in his _Elia_ essay "Oxford in the Vacation." In 1820, I see from the Directory, the Accountant's Office, where Lamb had his desk, kept sacred only five red-letter days, where, ten years earlier, it had observed many.

"Mr. Monkhouse," Thomas Monkhouse, a friend of the Wordsworths and of Lamb. He was at Haydon's dinner.

Here should come a note from Lamb to Charles and James Ollier, dated May 28, 1818, which apparently accompanied final proofs of Lamb's _Works_. Lamb remarks, "There is a Sonnet to come in by way of dedication." This would be that to Martin Burney at the beginning of Vol. II. The _Works_ were published in two volumes with a beautiful dedication to Coleridge (see Vol. IV. of the present edition). Charles Ollier (1788-1859) was a friend of Leigh Hunt's, for whom he published, as well as for Shelley. He also brought out Keats' first volume. The Olliers' address was The Library, Vere Street, Oxford Street.]