SOUTH SEA HOUSE.

Mr. John Lamb, the Essayist's brother, was a clerk in the South Sea House. His passion for picture collecting is recorded in the admirable sketch of him (as James Elia) in "My Relations."

OXFORD IN THE VACATION.

"G. D.," Mr. George Dyer, author of a "History of the University and Colleges of Cambridge." The passage in brackets was suppressed at the earnest remonstrance of Dyer, who complained that it conveyed quite a false impression of the treatment he had received from his various employers. Mr. Procter vouches for the truth of the anecdote about Dyer's calling at "M-'s, in Bedford Square;' another example of his extreme absence of mind will be found in a later Essay, "Amicus Redivivus."

To Elia's confession of his aversion to MSS., on page 172, line 26, was appended the following note in the original Essay:

There is something to me repugnant at any time in written hand. The text never seems determinate. Print settles it. I had thought of the Lycidas as of a full-grown beauty-as springing up with all its

parts absolute-till, in an evil hour, I was shown the original written copy of it, together with the other minor poems of its author, in the library of Trinity, kept like some treasure, to be proud of. I wish they had thrown them in the Cam, or sent them after the latter cantos of Spenser, into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me to see the fine things in their ore! interlined, corrected! as if their words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at pleasure! as if they might have been otherwise, and just as good! as if inspiration were made up of parts, and those fluctuating, successive, indifferent! I will never go into the workshop of any great artist again, nor desire a sight of his picture till it is fairly off the easel; no, not if Raphael were to be alive again, and painting another Galatea.

After ་་ 'none thinks of offering violence or injustice to him," page 173, line 16, there was reference to the following

note:

Violence or injustice, certainly none, Mr. Elia. But you will acknowledge that the charming unsuspectingness of our friend has sometimes laid him open to attacks, which, though savouring (we hope) more of waggery than of malice-such is our unfeigned respect for G. D.-might, we think, much better have been omitted. Such was that

silly joke of L- -, who, at the time the question of the Scotch novels was first agitated, gravely assured our friend-who as gravely went about repeating it in all companies-that Lord Castlereagh had acknowledged himself to be the author of Waverley!-Note, not by Elia.

This is a fact. "L- "

was Elia himself.

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL THIRTY-FIVE

YEARS AGO.

This Essay is a review of, or rather, perhaps, a pendant to, C. Lamb's own "Recollections of Christ's Hospital," and gives some of the less favourable characteristics of the system adopted there. Tobin was a friend of Lamb's, of whom little is known. In a letter to Wordsworth, full of elation at the acceptance of his farce, entitled "Mr. H.," by the managers of Drury Lane Theatre, Lamb says:-" On the following Sunday, Mr. Tobin comes. The scent of a manager's letter brought him. He would have gone farther any day on such a business. I read the letter to him. He deems it authentic and peremptory." In a subsequent letter to Southey, dated August 15, 1815, he says:-"Tobin is dead." Godwin's tragedy "Antonio," we learn from a letter of Lamb's, came out "in a feigned name, as one Tobin's."

This Essay contains a very faithful representation of Lamb's teachers and schoolfellows at Christ's Hospital. Boyer and Field both received their appointments in 1776. The Rev. L. P. Stevens, who was Grecian in 1788, left Christ's Hospital in 1807. Dr. Te (the Rev. Arthur William Trollope) retired in 1827, and died in the same year. The Right Honourable Sir Edward Thornton was Grecian in 1785, and third wrangler at Cambridge in 1789. Through the interest of Mr. Pitt, he became Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of Portugal and the Brazils. George Richards was Grecian in 1785, before Middleton. Mr. Charles Valentine Le Grice supplied a good deal of information about Elia's schooldays. His younger brother, Samuel Le Grice, was "like a brother" to Lamb at the time of his mother's death. died of the yellow fever, in Jamaica. Robert Allen was Grecian in 1792. (See also "Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago.") Frederick William Franklin, Master of Hertford, and Marmaduke Thompson, complete the list of those companions of Lamb's school-days who can now be identified.

TWO RACES OF MEN

He

"Ralph Bigod." John Fenwick, editor of the Albion newspaper, to which Lamb at one time contributed, was the original of this character. (See "Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago," in the "Last Essays of Elia.")

S. T. Coleridge, in early manhood, enlisted in a regiment of dragoons under the assumed name of Comber back, or Comberbatch.

The initial "K." was probably intended for Kenney, the farce writer, whom Lamb visited at Versailles (Mr. Percy Fitzgerald tells us) during a short trip to France.

racter.

MRS. BATTLE'S OPINION ON WHIST.

Mr. Procter says that Mrs. Battle is an imaginary chaShe bears, however, some resemblance, as Mr. Percy Fitzgerald remarks, to Elia's Grandmother Field, in "Dream Children.' In "Blakesmoor, in H-shire" (the house in which this old relative was housekeeper for many years), Elia speaks of "the room in which old Mrs. Battle died."

"Bridget Elia,”-his sister Mary. Under this name she is always mentioned in the Essays.

A CHAPTER ON EARS.

"My good Catholic friend Nov

the well-known composer.

was Mr. Novello,

THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. The "very dear friend" in New South Wales was Mr. Barron Field, to whom the Essay called "Distant Correspondents" was originally addressed.

M." was no doubt Mr. Thomas Manning, who was a mathematical tutor at Cambridge at the time Lamb made his acquaintance.

Page 252,

"Can I reproach her for it?" Between this and the concluding sentence the following words appeared in the original Essay :

"These kind of complaints are not often drawn from me. I am aware that I am a fortunate, I mean a prosperous, man."

My feelings prevent me from transcribing any further.

IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES.

"B," Braham, the celebrated tenor. Lamb elsewhere describes him as a mixture of "the Jew, the gentlean, and the angel."

The Quaker story Lamb had from Carlisle, the celebrated surgeon, who was an eyewitness of the scene.

WITCHES AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS.

"Dear little T. H.," one of Mr. Leigh Hunt's children, of whom Lamb was extremely fond, and to whom he addressed some pretty lines.

MY RELATIONS.

James and Bridget Elia." His brother and sister, John and Mary Lamb.

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.

"B. F." Mr. Barron Field.

MODERN GALLANTRY.

Sir T. Talfourd says, in his Memoir of Lamb, that "his account of Mr. Paice's politeness could be attested to the letter by living witnesses." (1834.)

THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER

TEMPLE.

are fic

Mr. Procter says that all these "old Benchers titious characters, with the exception of "Samuel Salt," the barrister, in whose employ C. Lamb's father was.

"Lovel;" this admirable sketch is a portrait of Elia's father, Mr. John Lamb.

"R. N.," probably Mr. Robert Norris, a very old friend of the Lambs, and an officer of the Inner Temple.

GRACE BEFORE MEAT.

Mr. C. V. Le Grice's witticism has often been attributed to other humorists.

DREAM CHILDREN.

"

Some further account of the " great house in Norfolk will be found in "Blakesmoor," the first of the "Last Essays of Elia." The house is there represented as situated in Hertfordshire, as it really was.