wrote a treatise on whist (see notes to "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist," page 333).

Page 243, line 8. Comparatively easy spirits. After these words, in the London Magazine, came a break.

Page 243, line 10. Various times since. There is a suggestion here, since the admiral died in November, 1821, that Lamb wrote this essay between July and November of that year, and had kept it by him until the time of publication, four years later. Page 243, line 23. Concordia discors. 66 Harmony out of unharmony." The phrase is Horace's (Epistles, I., xii., 19), and also Ovid's (Metamorphoses, I., 433).

Page 243, line 29. To "make his destiny his choice." From Marvell's poem, quoted in "Blakesmoor in H- -shire," "Upon Appleton House," in reference to the coming wedding of Mary Fairfax:

Whence for some universal good,

The priest shall cut the sacred bud;
While her glad parents most rejoice

And make their destiny their choice.

Page 244. THE CHILD ANGEL.

London Magazine, June, 1823.

Lamb

Thomas Moore's Loves of the Angels was published in 1823. used it twice for his own literary purposes: on the present occasion, with tenderness, and again, eight years later, with some ridicule, for his comic ballad, "Satan in Search of a Wife," 1831, was ironically dedicated to the admirers of Moore's poem (see Vol. V., page 110). Page 244, line 16. Gossiping. Christening. Page 244, line 31. "Which mortals

vented this quotation on a well-known model. the Lock," I., 77, 78):—

Lamb probably inPope has ("Rape

of

'Tis but their Sylph, the wise Celestials know,
Tho' Honour is the word with Men below.

Page 246.

A DEATH-Bed.

Hone's Table Book, Vol. I., cols. 425-426, 1827. Signed “L.," and dated London, February 10, 1827. The essay is very slightly altered from a letter written by Lamb to Crabb Robinson, January 20, 1827, describing the death of Randal Norris. It was printed in the first edition only of the Last Essays of Elia; its place being taken afterwards by the "Confessions of a Drunkard," an odd exchange. The essay was omitted, in deference, it is believed, to the objection of Mrs. Norris to her reduced circumstances being more public. As the present edition adheres to the text of the first edition, "The Death-Bed in its original place as decided by the author. The "Confessions of a Drunkard" will be found on page 133 of Vol. I.

is included

Randal Norris was for many years sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple (see postscript to the essay on the "Old Benchers," page 90). Writ

ing to Wordsworth in 1830 Lamb spoke of him as "sixty years ours and our father's friend." An attempt has been made to identify him with the Mr. Norris of Christ's Hospital who was so kind to the Lambs after the tragedy of September, 1796. I cannot find any trace of Randal Norris having been connected with anything but the law and the Inner Temple; but possibly the Mr. Norris of the school was a relative.

Mrs. Randal Norris was connected with Widford, the village adjoining Blakesware, where she had known Mary Field, Lamb's grandmother. It was thither that she and her son retired after Randal Norris's death, to join her daughters, Miss Betsy and Miss Jane, who had a school for girls known as Goddard House School. Lamb kept up his friendship with them to the end, and they corresponded with Mary Lamb after his death. Mrs. Norris died in 1843, aged seventyThe grave of Richard Norris, the One of the daughters, Elizabeth, The other

eight, and was buried at Widford. son, is also there. He died in 1836. married Charles Tween, of Widford, and lived until 1894. daughter, Jane, married Arthur Tween, his brother, and lived until 1891.

Mary Lamb was a bridesmaid at the Norris's wedding and after the ceremony accompanied the bride and bridegroom to Richmond for the day. So one of their daughters told Canon Ainger.

Crabb Robinson seems to have exerted himself for the family, as Lamb wished. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt says that an annuity of £80 was settled upon Mrs. Norris.

Page 246, line 21.

Page 246, line 30.

Poor deaf Robert.

In the letter-" Richard." To the last he called me Jemmy. In the letter to Crabb Robinson-"To the last he called me Charley. I have none to call me Charley now."

Page 246, line 32.

That bound me to B. In the letter to Crabb Robinson-" that bound me to the Temple." Page 247, line 5.

"The Temple Library."

Your Corporation Library. In the letter

Page 247, line 11. He had one Song. I have not been able to find this song.

London Magazine, March, 1823.

This essay forms a pendant, or complement, to "Mackery End in Hertfordshire," page 75, completing the portrait of Mary Lamb begun there. It was, with "The Wedding" (page 239), Wordsworth's favourite among the Last Essays.

Page 248, line 26. Dancing the hays. An old English dance. Page 248, line 31. Speciosa miracula. "Shining wonders." Horace, Ars Poetica, 144, uses the phrase in describing the wonders of the Odyssey.

Page 249, line 5.

The brown suit. P. G. Patmore, in his recollections of Lamb in the Court Journal, 1835, afterwards reprinted, with some alterations, in his My Friends and Acquaintances, stated

that Lamb laid aside his snuff-coloured suit in favour of black, after twenty years of the India House; and he suggests that Wordsworth's stanzas in "A Poet's Epitaph" was the cause:—

But who is he, with modest looks,
And clad in homely russet brown?
He murmurs near the running brooks
A music sweeter than their own.

He is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a noon-day grove;
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.

Whatever Patmore's theory may be worth, it is certain that Lamb adhered to black after the change.

Page 249, line 7. Beaumont and Fletcher. See note on page 328. Page 249, line 8. Barker's. Barker's old book-shop was at No. 20 Great Russell Street, over which the Lambs went to live in 1817. It had then, however, become Mr. Owen's, a brazier's (Wheatley's London Past and Present gives Barker's as 19, but a contemporary directory says 20). Great Russell Street is now Russell Street.

Page 249, line 12. From Islington. This would be when Lamb and his sister lived at 36 Chapel Street, Pentonville, a stone's throw from the Islington boundary, in 1799-1800, after the death of their father.

Page 249, line 25. Corbeau. A draper's word-from corbeau, a

raven.

33

Page 249, line 33. The "Lady Blanch." See Mary Lamb's poem on this picture, Vol. V., page 38, and note. The picture, which is there reproduced, is known as "Modesty and Vanity.' Page 249, line 36. Colnaghi's. Colnaghi, the printseller, then in Cockspur Street. After this word came in the London Magazine "(as W- calls it)." The reference, Mr. Roger Rees tells me, is to Wainewright's article "C. van Vinkbooms, his Dogmas for Dilletanti," in the same magazine for December, 1821, where he wrote: "I advise Colnaghi and Molteno to import a few impressions immediately of those beautiful plates from Da Vinci. The . . . and Miss Lamb's favourite, Lady Blanche and the Abbess,' commonly called 'Vanitas et Modestia' (Campanella, 10s. 6d.), for I foresee that this Dogma will occasion a considerable call for them-let them, therefore, be ready."

Page 250, line 6. Piscator . . Trout Hall. See The Complete Angler, Cotton's continuation.

Page 250, line 12. To see a play. "The Battle of Hexham" and "The Surrender of Calais ' were by George Colman the Younger; "The Children in the Wood," a favourite play of Lamb's, especially with Miss Kelly in it, was by Thomas Morton. Mrs. Bland was Maria Theresa Bland, née Romanzini, 1769-1838, who married Mrs. Jordan's brother. Jack Bannister we have met, in "The Old Actors."

Page 251, line 24.

"Lusty brimmers."

Then let us welcome the new guest
With lusty brimmers of the best.