Page 146, line 31. Milton's line :

Asps or amphisbænas. A recollection of

Scorpion and Asp, and Amphisbæna dire.

Paradise Lost, X., line 524.

Page 146, line 34. Miss Pope. Jane Pope (1742-1818), the original Mrs. Candour, left the stage in 1808.

Page 147, line 2. Manager's comedy. Sheridan was manager of Drury Lane when the "School for Scandal" was produced. Page 147, lines 2, 3. Miss Farren . . . Mrs. Abingdon.

Elizabeth Farren, afterwards Countess of Derby, played Lady Teazle for the last time in 1797. Mrs. Abingdon had retired from Drury Lane in 1782.

Smith. "Gentleman" Smith took his farewell

Page 147, line 6. of the stage, as Charles Surface, in 1788. Page 147, last line.

"Ode on the Departing Page 147, same line.

"Lidless dragon eyes." Year," Stanza VIII.

From Coleridge's

Fashionable tragedy. See page 291 for the continuation of this essay in the London Magazine.

Page 148. ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN.

See note to the essay "On Some of the Old Actors," page 392. Lamb lifted this essay into the London Magazine from The Examiner, where it had appeared on November 7 and 8, 1819, with slight changes. At the end Lamb wrote, in reference to Talfourd (see Vol. I., page 532, where a portion of Talfourd's article is printed) :—

"This faint sketch we beg to be taken as a mere corollary to some admirable strictures on the character of this great performer, in a paper signed T. N. T. which appeared some months back in the Champion. Non tam certandi cupidus quam te imitari aveo." [My desire is not to rival; I am eager to take example by you.]

Other original readings, worthy of note, were Emery for Farley at the beginning of the third paragraph, and, in the last, after "as if some Arabian Night were being acted before him" the words " or as if Thalaba were no tale."

Page 148. Title. Munden. Joseph Shepherd Munden (17581832) acted at Covent Garden practically continuously from 1790 to 1811. He moved to Drury Lane in 1813, and remained there till the end. His farewell performance was on May 31, 1824. See Vol. I., page 378, for a description of it, by Lamb or another. See also Vol. I., pages 268 and 341, for other Munden papers. We know Lamb to have met Munden from Raymond's Memoirs of Elliston (see note on page 413). Page 148, line 3. Cockletop. In O'Keeffe's farce "Modern Antiques. This farce is no longer played, although a skilful hand might, I think, make it attractive to our audiences. Barry Cornwall in his memoir of Lamb has a passage concerning Munden as Cockletop,

which helps to support Lamb's praise. Support is not necessary, but useful; it is one of the misfortunes of the actor's calling that he can live only in the praise of his critics.

In the Drama of "Modern Antiques," especially, space was allowed him for his movements. The words were nothing. The prosperity of the piece depended exclusively on the genius of the actor. Munden enacted the part of an old man credulous beyond ordinary credulity; and when he came upon the stage there was in him an almost sublime look of wonder, passing over the scene and people around him, and settling apparently somewhere beyond the moon. What he believed in, improbable as it was to mere terrestrial visions, you at once conceived to be quite possible,—to be true. The sceptical idiots of the play pretend to give him a phial nearly full of water. He is assured that this contains Cleopatra's tear. Well; who can disprove it? Munden evidently recognised it. "What a large tear!" he exclaimed. Then they place in his hands a druidical harp, which to vulgar eyes might resemble a modern gridiron. He touches the chords gently: "pipes to the spirit ditties of no tone;" and you imagine Æolian strains. At last, William Tell's cap is produced. The people who affect to cheat him, apparently cut the rim from a modern hat, and place the scull-cap in his hands; and then begins the almost finest piece of acting that I ever witnessed. Munden accepts the accredited cap of Tell, with confusion and reverence. He places it slowly and solemnly on his head, growing taller in the act of crowning himself. Soon he swells into the heroic size; a great archer; and enters upon his dreadful task. He weighs the arrow carefully; he tries the tension of the bow, the elasticity of the string; and finally, after a most deliberate aim, he permits the arrow to fly, and looks forward at the same time with intense anxiety. You hear the twang, you see the hero's knitted forehead, his eagerness; you tremble;-at last you mark his calmer brow, his relaxing smile, and are satisfied that the son is saved!-It is difficult to paint in words this extraordinary performance, which I have several times seen; but you feel that it is transcendent. You think of Sagittarius, in the broad circle of the Zodiac; you recollect that archery is as old as Genesis; you are reminded that Ishmael, the son of Hagar, wandered about the Judæan deserts and became an archer.

There the antic sits
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp.

Richard II.," Act III., Scene 2, lines 162, 163. Edwin. This would probably be John Edwin But John Edwin the Younger (1768-1805) He was well known in Nipperkin, one of

Page 148, line 24. the Elder (1749-1790). might have been meant. Munden's parts.

Charles

Page 148, line 29. Farley... Knight . . . Liston. Farley (1771-1859), mainly known as the deviser of Covent Garden pantomimes (see page 448); Edward Knight (1774-1826), an eccentric little comedian; John Liston (1776 ?-1846), whose mock biography Lamb wrote (see Vol. I., page 248). In his paper (if it be his) on Munden's farewell Lamb speaks of his "bouquet of faces.'

Page 148, line 39. Suett. See note on page 394.

Page 149, line 1. Sir Christopher Curry... Sir Christopher Curry... Old Dornton. Sir Christopher in "Inkle and Yarico," by the younger Colman; Old Dornton in Holcroft's "Road to Ruin."

Page 149, line 11. Fight with his own shadow-" SESSA". Probably a recollection of "King Lear" where Edgar speaks of coursing his own shadow (Act III., Scene 4, line 58), and again cries, "Dolphin, my boy, my boy, sessa! let him trot by "-line 104. Sessa is an interjection. In "The Taming of the Shrew" we have, "Let the world slide, sessa!"

Page 149, line 12. The Cobbler of Preston. A play, founded on "The Taming of the Shrew," by Charles Johnson, written in 1716.

а

A Legacy from Elia.

THE LAST ESSAYS

OF

ELIA.

BEING

A SEQUEL TO ESSAYS PUBLISHED UNDER
THAT NAME

LONDON:

EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET.

1833.

(From the Dyce and Foster Collection)

Page 149, line 21. Fuseli. Henry Fuseli, the painter (1741

1825).

Page 151.

THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA.
PREFACE.

London Magazine, January, 1823, where it was entitled "A Character of the late Elia. By a Friend.' Signed Phil-Elia. Lamb did not reprint it for ten years, and then with certain omissions. In the London Magazine the "Character" began thus :“A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA "BY A FRIEND

"This gentleman, who for some months past had been in a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to nature. He just lived long enough (it was what he wished) to see his papers collected into a volume. The pages of the LONDON MAGAZINE will henceforth know him no more.

"Exactly at twelve last night his queer spirit departed, and the bells of Saint Bride's rang him out with the old year. The mournful vibrations were caught in the dining-room of his friends T. and H.; and the company, assembled there to welcome in another First of January, checked their carousals in mid-mirth and were silent. Janus wept.

The gentle P―r, in a whisper, signified his intention of devoting an Elegy; and Allan C——, nobly forgetful of his countrymen's wrongs, vowed a Memoir to his manes, full and friendly as a Tale of Lyddalcross.'

Elia had just been published when this paper appeared, and it was probably Lamb's serious intention to stop the series. He was, however, prevailed to continue. T. and H. were Taylor & Hessey (see page 302), the owners of the London Magazine. Janus was Janus Weathercock, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright; P▬▬r was Bryan Waller Procter, or Barry Cornwall, who afterwards wrote Lamb's life, and Allan C was Allan Cunningham, who called himself "Nalla" in the London Magazine. "The Twelve Tales of Lyddal Cross ran

serially in the magazine in 1822.

Page 151, line 21. A former Essay. In the London Magazine "his third essay," referring to "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago" (page 12).

Page 152, line 1. My late friend. The opening sentences of this paragraph seem to have been deliberately modelled, as indeed is the whole essay, upon Sterne's character of Yorick in Tristram Shandy, Vol. I., Chapter XI. Compare the following description of Yorick :—

But, in plain truth, he was a man unhackneyed and unpractised in the world, and was altogether as indiscreet and foolish on every other subject of discourse where policy is wont to impress restraint. Yorick had no impression but one, and that was what arose from the nature of the deed spoken of; which impression he would usually translate into