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

Page 173, line 34. Lethean cup. hell whose waters conferred forgetfulness. Page 173, line 41. "Eterne.

Lethe, one of the rivers of

Lady Macbeth. But in them nature's copy's not eterne.

"Macbeth," Act III., Scene 2, line 38.

Page 173, at foot. "We know not where . . .”

Othello. I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume.

Page 174, line 1. folio containing also note on page 327).

"Othello," Act V., Scene 2, lines 12, 13. Life of the Duke of Newcastle. Lamb's copy, a the "Philosophical Letters," is in America (see

Page 174, line 6. Sydney, Bishop Taylor, Milton... I cannot say where are Lamb's copies of Sydney and Fuller; but the British Museum has his Milton, rich in MS. notes, a two-volume edition, 1751. The Taylor, which Lamb acquired in 1798, is the 1678 folio Sermons. I cannot say where it now is.

Page 174, line 11. Shakspeare. Lamb's Shakespeare was not sold at the sale of his library; only a copy of the Poems, 12mo, 1714. His annotated copy of the Poems, 1640, is in America. There is a reference to one of Rowe's plates in the essay "My First Play" (see page 98 and plate opposite page 378). The Shakespeare gallery engravings were the costly series of illustrations to Shakespeare commissioned by John Boydell (1719-1804), Lord Mayor of London in 1790. The pictures were exhibited in the Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, and the engravings were published in 1802.

After the word "Shakespeare," in the London Magazine, came the sentence: "You cannot make a pet book of an author whom everybody reads."

In an unpublished letter to Wordsworth, February 1, 1806, Lamb says: "Shakespear is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying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

wear.

Page 174, line 19. Beaumont and Fletcher.

See note on page

After these words, in

328 for an account of Lamb's copy, now in the British Museum. Page 174, line 21. No sympathy with them. the London Magazine, came, "nor with Mr. Gifford's Ben Jonson." This edition by Lamb's old enemy, William Gifford, editor of the Quarterly, was published in 1816. Lamb's copy of Ben Jonson was dated 1692, folio. It is now in America, I believe.

Page 174, line 24. The reprint of the Anatomy of Melancholy. This reprint was, I think, published in 1800, in two volumes, marked ninth edition. Lamb's copy was dated 1621, quarto. I do not know where it now is.

Page 174, line 28. Malone. This was Edmund Malone (17411812), the critic and editor of Shakespeare, who in 1793 persuaded the Vicar of Stratford-on-Avon to whitewash the coloured bust of the poet in the chancel. A Gentleman's Magazine epigrammatist, sharing Lamb's view, wrote:—

Stranger, to whom this monument is shown,
Invoke the poet's curse upon Malone;

Whose meddling zeal his barbarous taste betrays,
And daubs his tombstone, as he mars his plays.

But

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

Page 175, line 3. The Fairy Queen. Lamb's copy was a folio, 1617, 12, 17, 13. Against Canto XI., Stanza 32, he has written: "Dear Venom, this is the stave I wot of. I will maintain it against any in the book."

Page 175, line 4. Bishop Andrewes. Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester (1555-1626).

Page 175, line 31. Nando's. A coffee-house in Fleet Street, at the east corner of Inner Temple Lane, and thus at one time close to Lamb's rooms.

Page 175, line 33. "The Chronicle is in hand, Sir." In the London Magazine the following paragraph was here inserted :—

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

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

Page 175, line 37. Town and Country Magazine. This magazine flourished between 1769 and 1792.

Page 175, line 42. Poor Tobin. Possibly John Tobin (1770-1804), the playwright, though I think not. More probably the Tobin mentioned in Lamb's letter to Wordsworth about " Mr. H." in June, 1806 (two years after John Tobin's death), to whom Lamb read the manager's letter concerning the farce. This would be James, John Tobin's brother (see note on page 318).

Page 176, line 2.
Page 176, line 5.

sacred to Venus.

Page 176, line 5.

Candide. Voltaire's satire.
Her Cythera.

Virtue Rewarded, 1740.

Pamela.

Cythera was a Grecian island

Richardson's novel-Pamela; or,

VOL. II.-27

Page 176, line 17. Skinner's-street. Skinner's Street, projected by Alderman Skinner, was built in 1802. It ran from Newgate to Holborn Bridge, occupying (except for its gradient) the site of that part of Holborn Viaduct which now lies between Newgate Street and the viaduct proper over Farringdon Street. At No. 41 Mrs. William Godwin had established her Juvenile Library, which put forth the Lambs' books for children. Skinner Street wholly disappeared in 1867, when the Holborn Viaduct was begun.

Page 176, line 19. Lardner. Nathaniel Lardner (1684-1768), the Unitarian theologian, whose great work was On the Credibility of Gospel History.

Page 176, line 23. The five points. The five points of doctrine of the Calvinists, namely, Original Sin, Predestination, Irresistible Grace, Particular Redemption and the Final Perseverance of the Saints. After these words came, in the London Magazine, the following paragraph:

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

Master Betty was William Henry West Betty (1791-1874), known as

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

Martin B

Page 176, line 32. "Snatch a fearful joy." From Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College." Martin Charles Burney, son of a lifelong friend of the Lambs-to whom Lamb part of his Works in 1818 (see Vol. V., page

Page 176, line 32. Admiral Burney, and dedicated the prose 42, and note).

Page 176, at foot. A quaint poetess. Mary Lamb. The poem is in Poetry for Children, 1809 (see Vol. III. of this edition). In line 17 the word "then" has been inserted by Lamb. The punctuation also differs from that of the Poetry for Children.

Page 177. The Old Margate Hoy.

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

Page 177, line 15. I have said so before. See "Oxford in the Vacation," page 8.

Page 177, line 18. My beloved Thames. Lamb describes a riparian holiday at and about Richmond in a letter to Robert Lloyd in 1804. Page 177, line 22. Worthing... There is no record of the Lambs' sojourn at Worthing or Eastbourne. They were at Brighton in 1817, and Mary Lamb at any rate enjoyed walking on the Downs there; in a letter to Miss Wordsworth of November 21, 1817, she described them as little mountains, almost as good as Westmoreland scenery. They were at Hastings-at 13 Standgate Street-in 1823 (see Lamb's letters to Bernard Barton, July 10, 1823, to Hood, August 10, 1824, and to Dibdin, June, 1826). The only evidence that we have of Lamb knowing Worthing is his "Mr. H." That play turns upon the name Hogsflesh, afterwards changed to Bacon. The two chief innkeepers at Worthing at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of its prosperity were named Hogsflesh and Bacon, and there was a rhyme concerning them which was well known (see notes to "Mr. H." in Vol. V.).

Page 177, line 24. Many years ago. A little later Lamb says he was then fifteen. This would make the year 1790. It was probably on this visit to Margate that Lamb conceived the idea of his

sonnet, "O, I could laugh," which Coleridge admired so much (see Vol. V., page 4).

Page 177, line 29. Thou old Margate Hoy. This old sailingboat gave way to a steam-boat, the Thames, some time after 1815. The Thames, launched in 1815, was the first true steam-boat the river had seen. The old hoy, or lighter, was probably sloop-rigged.

Page 177, at foot. That fire-god. Vulcan (see the Iliad, XX.-XXI.), which tells how the Trojan river rose to destroy Achilles, but Vulcan was sent by Jove to beat back water with fire.

Page 178, line 14.

Ariel.

Like another Ariel.

Now on the beak,
Now in the waist, the deck, in every cabin,
I flamed amazement.

"The Tempest," Act I., Scene 2, lines 196-198.

Page 178, fourth line from foot. Our enemies. Lamb refers here to the attacks of Blackwood's Magazine on the Cockneys, among whom he himself had been included (see note on page 323). In the London Magazine he had written "unfledged" for "unseasoned.”

Page 178, next line. Aldermanbury, or Watling-street. In the London Magazine Lamb had written "Thames, or Tooley Street.” Page 179, line 18. Princess-Elizabeth. This would be Elizabeth, Landgravine of Hesse Homburg (1770-1840), daughter of George III., who from her gift of drawing was known as "The Muse." Page 179, line 29. "Ignorant present."

Lady Macbeth. Thy letters have transported me beyond

This ignorant present.

"Macbeth," Act I., Scene 5, lines 57, 58.

Page 179, last line. The Reculvers. The western towers of the old parish church of Reculver, on the Kentish shore of the mouth of the Thames, bear this name among navigators.

Page 180, line 16. Margate... Infirmary. Bathing Infirmary, opened in 1796.

Page 180, line 24. Pent up in populous cities.

a recollection of Milton's

As one who long in populous city pent.

Page 181, line 12. Plata . .

The Royal Sea

Almost certainly

Paradise Lost, IX., line 445.

Orellana. Plata, the River Plate.

The Orellana is the Amazon. In Thomson's Seasons we read of "the mighty Orellana." The quotation that follows, " For many a day . . ." is from that poem-" Summer," line 1004, &c.

Page 181, line 16. "Still-vexed Bermoothes." Tempest," Act I., Scene 2, line 229.

From "The Another recollection of

Shakespeare occurs in the next lines, where Lamb remembers the Archbishop of Canterbury's simile in "Henry V.," Act I., Scene 2, lines 164, 165:—

As is the ooze and bottom of the sea,

With sunken wreck and sumless treasuries.

Page 181, line 20. "Be but as buggs . . From Spenser's

...