Elia, is printed in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt's The Lambs. He had another link of a kind with Lamb in being M.P. for "sweet Calne in Wiltshire." Jekyll's chambers were at 6 King's Bench Walk. On the same staircase lived for a while George Colman the Younger. Page 97, line 9 from foot. Thomas Coventry. Thomas Coventry became a Bencher in 1766. He was the nephew of William, fifth Earl of Coventry, and resided at North Cray Place, near Bexley, in Kent, and in Serjeant's Inn, where he died in 1797, in his eightyfifth year. He is buried in the Temple Church. Coventry was a sub-governor of the South-Sea House, and it was he who presented Lamb's friend, James White, to Christ's Hospital. He was M.P. for Bridport from 1754 to 1780. As an illustration of Coventry's larger benefactions it may be remarked that he presented £10,000 worth of South Sea stock to Christ's Hospital in 1782.

Page 98, line 9. Samuel Salt. Samuel Salt was the son of the Rev. John Salt, of Audley, in Staffordshire; and he married a daughter of Lord Coventry, thus being connected with Thomas Coventry by marriage. He was M.P. for Liskeard for some years, and a governor of the South-Sea House. Samuel Salt, who became a Bencher in 1782, rented at No. 2 Crown Office Row two sets of chambers, in one of which the Lamb family dwelt. John Lamb, Lamb's father, who is described as a scrivener in Charles's Christ's Hospital application form, was Salt's right-hand man, not only in business, but privately, while Mrs. Lamb acted as housekeeper and possibly as cook. Samuel Salt played the part of tutelary genius to John Lamb's two sons. It was he who arranged for Charles to be nominated for Christ's Hospital (by Timothy Yeats); probably he was instrumental also in getting him into the East India House; and in all likelihood it was he who paved the way for the younger John Lamb's position in the South-Sea House. It was also Samuel Salt who gave to Charles and Mary the freedom of his library (see the reference in the essay on "Mackery End"): a privilege which, to ourselves, is the most important of all. Salt died in February, 1792, and is buried in the vault of the Temple Church. He left to John Lamb £500 in South Sea stock and a small annual sum, and to Elizabeth Lamb £200 in money; but with his death the prosperity of the family ceased.

See below.

Page 98, line 21. Lovel. Page 98, line 9 from foot. Miss Blandy. Mary Blandy was the daughter of Francis Blandy, a lawyer at Henley-on-Thames. The statement that she was to inherit £10,000 induced an officer in the marines, named Cranstoun, a son of Lord Cranstoun, to woo her, although he already had a wife living. Her father proving hostile, Cranstoun supplied her with arsenic to bring about his removal. Mr. Blandy died on August 14, 1751. Mary Blandy was arrested, and hanged on April 6 in the next year, after a trial which caused immense excitement. The defence was that Miss Blandy was ignorant of the nature of the powder, and thought it a means of

persuading her father to her point of view. In this belief the father, who knew he was being tampered with, also shared. Cranstoun avoided the law, but died in the same year. Lamb had made use of Salt's faux pas, many years earlier, in “Mr. H.” (see Vol. IV.). Page 99, line 13. His eye lacked lustre. At these words, in the London Magazine, came this passage :

66

Lady Mary Wortley Montague was an exception to her sex: she says, in one of her letters, 'I wonder what the women see in S. I do not think him by any means handsome. To me he appears an extraordinary dull fellow, and to want common sense. Yet the fools are all sighing for him.'

I have not found the passage. Page 99, line 14. Susan P- This is Susannah Peirson, sister of the Peter Peirson to whom we shall come directly. Samuel Salt left her a choice of books in his library, together with a money legacy and a silver inkstand, hoping that reading and reflection would make her life "more comfortable." B-d Row would be Bedford Row.

Page 99, line 12 from foot. F., the counsel. I cannot be sure who this was. The Law Directory of that day does not help. Page 99, foot. Elwes. John Elwes, the miser (1714-1789), whose Life was published in 1790 after running through The World--the work of Topham, that paper's editor, who is mentioned in Lamb's essay on Newspapers.'

66

Page 100, line 15. Lovel. Lovel was the name by which Lamb refers to his father, John Lamb. We know nothing of him in his prime beyond what is told in this essay, but after the great tragedy, there are in the Letters glimpses of him as a broken, querulous old man. He died in 1799. Of John Lamb's early days

on

all our information is contained in this essay, in his own Poetical Pieces, where he describes his life as a footman, and in the essay "Poor Relations," where his boyish memories of Lincoln are mentioned. Of his verses it was perhaps too much (though prettily filial) to say they were "next to Swift and Prior;" but they have much good humour and spirit. John Lamb's poems were printed in a thin quarto under the title Poetical Pieces on Several Occasions. The dedication was to "The Forty-Nine Members of the Friendly Society for the Benefit of their Widows, of whom I have the honour of making the Number Fifty," and in the dedicatory epistle it is stated that the Society was in some degree the cause of Number Fifty's commencing author, on account of its approving and printing certain lines which were spoken by him at an annual meeting at the Devil Tavern. The first two poetical pieces are apologues on marriage and the happiness that it should bring, the characters being drawn from bird life. Then follow verses written for the meetings of the Society, and miscellaneous compositions. Of these the description of a lady's footman's daily life, from within,

has a good deal of sprightliness, and displays quite a little mastery of the mock-heroic couplet. The last poem is a long rhymed version of the story of Joseph. With this exception, for which Lamb's character-sketch does not quite prepare us, it is very natural to think of the author as Lovel. One of the pieces, a familiar letter to a doctor, begins thus:

My good friend,

For favours to my son and wife,

I shall love you whilst I've life,

Your clysters, potions, help'd to save
Our infant lambkin from the grave.

The infant lambkin was probably John Lamb, but of course it might have been Charles. The expression, however, proves that punning ran in the family. Lamb's library contained his father's

copy of Hudibras.

Lamb's phrase, descriptive of his father's decline, is taken with a variation from his own poems-from the "Lines written on the Day of my Aunt's Funeral" (Blank Verse, 1798):—

One parent yet is left,-a wretched thing,

A sad survivor of his buried wife,

A palsy-smitten, childish, old, old man,

A semblance most forlorn of what he was-
A merry cheerful man.

Page 100, line 17. "Flapper." This is probably an allusion to the flappers in Gulliver's Travels-the servants who, in Laputa, carried bladders with which every now and then they flapped the mouths and ears of their employers, to recall them to themselves and disperse their meditations.

Page 100, line 9 from foot. Better was not concerned. At these words, in the London Magazine, came :—

"He pleaded the cause of a delinquent in the treasury of the Temple so effectually with S. the then treasurer-that the man was allowed to keep his place. L. had the offer to succeed him. It had been a lucrative promotion. But L. chose to forego the advantage, because the man had a wife and family."

Page 101, line 10. Bayes. Mr. Bayes is the author and stage manager in Buckingham's "Rehearsal." This phrase is not in the play and must have been John Lamb's own, in reference to Garrick.

Page 101, line 23. Peter Pierson. Peter Peirson (as his name was rightly spelled) was the son of Peter Peirson of the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, who lived probably in Bedford Row. He became a Bencher in 1800, died in 1808, and is buried in the Temple Church. When Charles Lamb entered the East India House in April, 1792, Peter Peirson and his brother, John Lamb, were his sureties.

Page 101, line 11 from foot. Our great philanthropist. Prob

ably John Howard, whom, as we have seen in the essay on "Christ's Hospital," Lamb did not love. He was of singular sallowness.

Page 101, line 9 from foot. Daines Barrington. Daines Barrington (1727-1800), the correspondent of Gilbert White, many of whose letters in The Natural History of Selborne are addressed to him. Indeed it was Barrington who inspired that work-a circumstance which must atone for his exterminatory raid on the Temple sparrows. His Chambers were at 5 King's Bench Walk. Barrington became a Bencher in 1777 and died in 1800. He is buried in the Temple Church. His Episcopal brother was Shute Barrington (1734-1826), Bishop successively of Llandaff, Salisbury and Durham.

Page 102, line 1. Old Barton. Thomas Barton, who became a Bencher in 1775 and died in 1791. His chambers were in King's Bench Walk. He is buried in the vault of the Temple Church.

Page 102, line 6. Read. John Reade, who became a Bencher in 1792 and died in 1804. His rooms were in Mitre Court Buildings. Page 102, line 6. Twopenny. Richard Twopenny was not a Bencher, but merely a resident in the Temple. He was strikingly thin. Twopenny was stockbroker to the Bank of England, and died in 1809.

Page 102, line 8. Wharry. John Wharry, who became a Bencher in 1801, died in 1812, and was buried in the Temple Church.

Page 102, line 22. Jackson. This was Richard Jackson, some time M.P. for New Romney, to whom Johnson, Boswell tells us, refused the epithet "Omniscient" as blasphemous, changing it to "all knowing." He was made a Bencher in 1770 and died in 1787.

Page 102, foot. Mingay. James Mingay, who was made a Bencher in 1785, died in 1812. He was M.P. for Thetford and senior King's Counsel. He was also Recorder of Aldborough, Crabbe's town. He lived at 4 King's Bench Walk.

Page 103, line 1. Baron Maseres. This was Francis Maseres (1731-1824), mathematician, reformer and Cursiter Baron of the Exchequer. He lived at 5 King's Bench Walk, and at Reigate, and wore a three-cornered hat and ruffles to the end. In April, 1801, Lamb wrote to Manning:-"I live at No. 16 Mitre-court Buildings, a pistol-shot off Baron Maseres'. You must introduce me to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He lives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the Baron and me together."

Baron Maseres, who was made a Bencher in 1774, died in 1824.

Hookers and Seldens.

Page 104, line 13. Richard Hooker (1554?-1600), the "judicious," was Master of the Temple. John Selden (1584-1654), the jurist, who lived in Paper Buildings and practised law in the Temple, was buried in the Temple Church with much pomp.

Page 104. GRACE BEFORE Meat.

London Magazine, November, 1821.

This was the essay, Lamb suggested, which Southey may have had in mind when in an article in the Quarterly Review he condemned Elia as wanting "a sounder religious feeling." In his "Letter to Southey" (Vol. I.), which contained Lamb's protest against Southey's strictures, he wrote:-66 "I am at a loss what particular essay you had in view (if my poor ramblings amount to that appellation) when you were in such a hurry to thrust in your objection, like bad news, foremost.-Perhaps the Paper on 'Saying Graces' was the obnoxious feature. I have endeavoured there to rescue a voluntary duty-good in place, but never, as I remember, literally commanded-from the charge of an undecent formality. Rightly taken, sir, that paper was not against graces, but want of grace; not against the ceremony, but the carelessness and slovenliness so often observed in the performance of it."

Page 108, line 12 from foot. C. Coleridge; but Lamb may really have said it.

Page 108, foot. The author of the Rambler. Veal pie with prunes in it was perhaps Dr. Johnson's favourite dish.

Page 109, line 10. Dagon. The fish god worshipped by the Philistines. See Judges xvi. 23 and 1 Samuel v. for the full significance of Lamb's reference.

Page 110, line 16. C. V. L. Charles Valentine le Grice. Later in life, in 1798, Le Grice himself became a clergyman.

Page 110, line 19. Our old form at school. The Christ's Hospital graces in Lamb's day were worded thus:

GRACE BEFORE MEAT

Give us thankful hearts, O Lord God, for the Table which thou hast spread for us. Bless thy good Creatures to our use, and us to thy service, for Jesus Christ his sake. Amen.

GRACE AFTER MEAT

Blessed Lord, we yield thee hearty praise and thanksgiving for our Founders and Benefactors, by whose Charitable Benevolence thou hast refreshed our Bodies at this time. So season and refresh our Souls with thy Heavenly Spirit, that we may live to thy Honour and Glory. Protect thy Church, the King, and all the Royal Family. And preserve us in peace and truth through Christ our Saviour. Amen.