Page 114, line 19. Alcides. Hercules.

Page 114, line 23. Eleventh persecution.

There had been ten

historic persecutions of the Christians, under Roman emperors, from Nero to Diocletian.

From haunted spring, and dale

Edg'd with poplar pale,

The parting genius is with sighing sent.

Milton's Hymn "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," Stanza 20.

Page 114, line 28. Bellum ad exterminationem. mination."

"War to exter

Page 115, line 4. Dionysius. This was the second Dionysius, or Dionysius the Younger, tyrant of Sicily, and for a while the pupil of Plato. On losing Syracuse he fled to Corinth and kept a school-in order, said Cicero, to be still a tyrant.

Page 115, line 8. Belisarius. A general under Justinian, who after a career of triumph died in neglect, and, it is said, in beggary, passing among the people with the cry, "Date obolum Belisario," "Give Belisarius a coin.' Vandyck's picture of Belisarius represents him uttering this appeal. Page 115, line ii. The Blind Beggar. The reference is to the ballad of "The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green." The version in the Percy Reliques relates the adventures of Henry, Earl of Leicester, the son of Simon de Montfort, who was blinded at the battle of Evesham and left for dead, and thereafter begged his way with his pretty Bessee. In the London Magazine Lamb had written "Earl of Flanders," which he altered to "Earl of Cornwall" in Elia. The ballad says Earl of Leicester.

66

Page 115, line 23. Dear Margaret Newcastle. One of Lamb's recurring themes of praise (see "The Two Races of Men," page 26, Mackery End in Hertfordshire," page 76, and "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading," page 174). "Romancical," according to the New English Dictionary, is Lamb's own word. This is the only reference given for it.

Page 115, line 29. Lear. See "King Lear," Act III., Scene 4,

line 104.

Page 115, line 30. Answer uses this phrase :

" mere nature." It is Timon who

Call the creatures

Page 115, line 30. Cresseid clap-dish. Chaucer's poem does not refer to Cressida's beggary. In The Testament of Cresseid by the Scottish poet Robert Henryson (1430 ?-1506?) she goes a-begging with a clapper. In "Twelfth Night the clown says: "Cressida was a beggar" (Act III., Scene 1, line 62). A clapdish, says Halliwell's

Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, was a dish or rather box with a movable lid, carried by beggars in former times to attract notice by the noise it made and to bring people to their doors." Cresseid's "other whiteness than beauty" is a reference to her leprosy, mentioned in Chaucer's Testament of Cresside.

Page 115, line 34. The Lucian wits. Lamb was probably thinking of Rabelais. In Book II., Chapter XXX., Epistemon describes Alexander the Great as occupied in hell mending stockings and Semiramis killing lice for beggars.

Page 115, line 40. "True ballad." "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid" is in the Percy Reliques. Autolycus in "The Winter's Tale" (Act IV., Scene 4, line 286) describes his ballad of the mermaid as very pitiful and as true."

66

Page 115, last line. "Neighbour grice." A grice, a slip. In the London Magazine, in a footnote, Lamb gave Timon as the reference :— For every grise of fortune

Timon.

Is smooth'd by that below.

"

'Timon of Athens," Act IV., Scene 3, lines 16, 17.

Page 115, last line. Poor rents and comings-in. Lamb omits quotation marks, but his mind evidently was upon Henry V.'s question, "What are thy rents, what are thy comings in?" ("Henry V.," Act IV., Scene 1, line 260).

Page 116, line 6. No rascally comparative. Another Shakespearian

echo :

King. To laugh at gibing boys and stand the push
Of every beardless vain comparative.

Page 116, line 23. London Magazine this with Adam's."

I Henry IV.," Act III., Scene 2, lines 66, 67. Less change than the Quaker's. In the sentence then followed: "His coat is coeval

Page 116, line 26. In one stay. In one place. See Spenser's Faerie Queen, Book VII., Canto 7, stanza 47 :—

So nothing here long standeth in one stay.

Page 116, line 37. Spital sermons. On Monday of Easter week it was the custom for the Christ's Hospital boys to walk in procession to the Royal Exchange, and on Tuesday to the Mansion House; on each occasion returning with the Lord Mayor to hear a special sermon -a spital sermon, as it was called-and an anthem. The sermon is now preached only on Easter Tuesday.

Page 116, line 40. "Look upon that poor and broken bankrupt there." The first Lord, in "As You Like It," quoting Jaques (see Act II., Scene 1, lines 56, 57).

Page 116, line 42.

Apocrypha.

Page 117, line 9.

Blind Tobits. See the Book of Tobit, in the

Overseers of St. L——. Lamb's Key states that both the overseers and the mild rector were inventions. In the London Magazine the rector's parish is “P———.”

VOL. II.-25

Page 117, line 12. Vincent Bourne. See Lamb's essay on Vincent Bourne, Vol. I., page 337, and note. This poem was translated by Lamb himself, and was first published in The Indicator for May 3, 1820. See Vol. V. for Lamb's other translations from Bourne.

Page 118, line 27. A well-known figure. This beggar I take to be Samuel Horsey, whose portrait, from Kirby's Wonderful and Scientific Museum, Vol. I., 1803, will be found on the opposite page. He is there stated to have been known as the King of the Beggars, and a very prominent figure in London. His mutilation is ascribed to the falling of a piece of timber in Bow Lane, Cheapside, some nineteen years before; but it may have been, as Lamb says, in the Gordon Riots of 1780.

There is the figure of Horsey on his little carriage, with several other of the more notable beggars of the day plying their calling, in an etching of old houses at the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, made by J. T. Smith in 1789 for his Ancient Topography of London, 1815. Smith also gives in his Vagabondia, 1817, a back view of Horsey, and says:—

Of this man there are various opinions; and it is much to be doubted if the truth can be obtained even from his own mouth. He states that Mr. Abernethy cut off his legs in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, but he does not declare from what cause; so that being deprived of the power of gaining a subsistence by labour, he was forced to become a beggar. By some persons he is styled the King of Beggars, but certainly without the least foundation. He says that no one has been less acquainted with beggars than himself; and as for his having the command of a district, that he utterly denies. His walks, or rather movements, are not always confined; on some days he slides to Charing-Cross, but is oftener to be seen at the door of Mr. Coutts's banking-house, perhaps with an idea that persons, just after they have received money, are more likely to bestow charity.

Smith ends with the following account of one of Horsey's unique accomplishments:

Of all other men, Horsey has the most dexterous mode of turning, or rather swinging himself into a gin-shop. He dashes the door open by forcibly striking the front of his sledge and himself against it.

In his Book for a Rainy Day John Thomas Smith claims to be a friend of Lamb's, but I do not find him mentioned by Lamb.

Page 118, line 39. Antæus. The giant, son of Neptune and Terra, who was renewed in strength every time he touched his mother Earth. Page 118, line 41. An Elgin marble. Lord Elgin's collection of sculpture from the Parthenon and other Athenian temples, brought to England in 1802, was, after being on view in his own house and at Burlington House, bought for the nation in 1816.

Page 118, line 45. This mandrake. According to old legend the mandrake, a vegetable which more or less resembles the human figure, shrieks when uprooted.

Page 118, line 49. Lapithan controversy. The Lapitha and the Centaurs fell out at the marriage feast of Pirithous, and after a fierce battle the Lapitha were victorious.

Page 118, last line. The os sublime. See Ovid's remark in the Metamorphoses, I., 84-86 :—

SAMUEL HORSEY,
Aged 55.

A Singular Beggar in the Streets of London

Pablishd Aug 30.1808. by. R. S. Karby. Lendon Howe Yard & 1.Scout. 447%. Strand.

From Kirby's "Wonderful and Eccentric Museum"