In a letter to Coleridge, Lamb says of his Grandmother Field, that she "lived housekeeper in a family the fifty or sixty last years of her life; that she was a woman of exemplary piety and goodness, and for many years before her death was terribly afflicted with a cancer in her breast, which she bore with true Christian patience."

"John L.," Charles's brother, a clerk in the South Sea House. He was lamed by the fall of a stone, which was blown down in a high wind.

DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS.

This Essay originally formed part of a letter to Mr. Barron Field, who had received a judicial appointment in New South Wales.

"J. W.," Mr. James White, who died in 1821. (See note to the following Essay.)

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.

James White was Lamb's schoolfellow at Christ's, and his constant companion in his early years. He was the author of "Letters of Sir John Falstaff, Knt.," in the writing of which Southey says Lamb had a share.

COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. The following postscript was appended to this Essay in the "London Magazine :"

P.S.-My friend Hume (not M.P.) has a curious manuscript in his possession, the original draft of the celebrated "Beggar's Petition" (who cannot say by heart the "Beggar's Petition ?"), as it was written by some school usher (as I remember), with corrections interlined from the pen of Oliver Goldsmith. As a specimen of the Doctor's improvement, I recollect one most judicious alteration

A pamper'd menial drove me from the door.

It stood originally—

A livery servant drove me, &c.

Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language properly substituted for the phrase of common conversation; against Wordsworth, I think I must get H. to send it to the "London," as a corollary to the foregoing.

A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.

Lamb confessed that he borrowed the idea of this Essay from his friend Manning, who had resided several years in China.

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.

Three articles in the "London Magazine," on "The Old Actors," were considerably altered by Elia, both in matter and arrangement, and were republished, in his collected works, as the present Essays "On some of the Old Actors," "On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," and "On the Acting of Munden."

The following passage, which commenced the last of the original Essays, was omitted in their altered form :

I do not know a more mortifying thing than to be conscious of a foregone delight, with a total oblivion of the person and manner which conveyed it. In dreams, I often stretch and strain after the countenance of Edwin, whom I once saw in "Peeping Tom." I cannot catch a feature of him. He is no more to me than Nokes or Pinkethman. Parsons, and, still more, Dodd, were near being lost to me till I was refreshed with their portraits (fine treat) the other day at Mr. Mathews's gallery at Highgate; which, with the exception of the Hogarth pictures, a few years since exhibited in Pall Mall, was the most delightful collection I ever gained admission to. There hang the players, in their single persons and in grouped scenes, from the Restoration,-Bettertons, Booths, Garricks,justifying the prejudices which we entertain for them; the Bracegirdles, the Mountforts, and the

Oldfields, fresh as Cibber has described them; the Woffington (a true Hogarth) upon a couch, dallying and dangerous; the screen scene in Brinsley's famous comedy; with Smith and Mrs. Abingdon, whom I have not seen; and the rest, whom, having seen, I see still there. There is Henderson, unrivalled in Comus, whom I saw at secondhand in the elder Harley; Harley, the rival of Holman, in Horatio; Holman, with the bright glittering teeth, in Lothario, and the deep paviour's sighs in Romeo, the jolliest person ("our son is fat") of any Hamlet I have yet seen, with the most laudable attempts (for a personable man) at looking melancholy; and Pope, the abdicated monarch of tragedy and comedy, in Harry the Eighth and Lord Townley. There hang the two Aickins, brethren in mediocrity; Wroughton, who in Kitely seemed to have forgotten that in prouder days he had personated Alexander; the specious form of John Palmer, with the special effrontery of Bobby; Bensley, with the trumpet-tongue; and little Quick (the retired Dioclesian of Islington), with his squeak like a Bart'lemew fiddle. There are fixed, cold as in life, the immovable features of Moody, who, afraid of o'erstepping Nature, sometimes stopped short of her; and the restless fidgetiness of Lewis, who, with no such fears, not seldom leaped o' the other side. There hang Farren and Whitfield, and Burton and Phillimore, names of small account in those times, but which, remembered now, or casually recalled by the sight of an old play-bill, with their associated recordations, can "drown an eye unused to flow. There too hangs, not far removed from them in death, the graceful plainness of the first Mrs. Pope, with a voice unstrung by age, but which in her better days must have competed with

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the silver tones of Barry himself, so enchanting in decay do I remember it,―of all her lady parts, exceeding herself in the "Lady Quakeress" (there earth touched heaven!) of O'Keefe, when she played it to the "merry cousin" of Lewis; and Mrs. Mallocks, the sensiblest of viragoes; and Miss Pope, a gentlewoman ever, to the verge of ungentility, with Churchill's compliment still burnishing upon her gay Honeycomb lips. There are the two Bannisters, and Sedgwick, and Kelly, and Dignum (Diggy), and the bygone features of Mrs. Ward, matchless in Lady Loverule; and the collective majesty of the whole Kemble family; and (Shakespeare's woman) Dora Jordan; and, by her, two Antics, who, in former and in latter days, have chiefly beguiled us of our griefs; whose portraits we shall strive to recall, for the sympathy of those who may not have had the benefit of viewing the matchless Highgate collection.

MR. SUETT.

O for a "slip-shod muse," to celebrate in numbers, loose and shambling as himself, the merits and the person of Mr. Richard Suett, Comedian !

Then followed the characteristic sketches of Suett and Munden, on pages 395 and 417.

To the suggestion (on page 389) that the stewardship of the Lady Olivia's household was probably conferred on Malvolio "for other respects than age or length of service," a note was appended.

Mrs. Inchbald seems to have fallen into the common mistake of the character in some sensible observations, otherwise, on this comedy. "It might be asked," she says, "whether this credulous steward was much deceived in imputing a degraded

taste, in the sentiments of love, to his fair lady Olivia, as she actually did fall in love with a domestic, and one who, from his extreme youth, was perhaps a greater reproach to her discretion than had she cast a tender regard upon her old and faithful servant. But where does she gather the fact of his age? Neither Maria nor Fabian ever cast that reproach upon him.

The following passage, which originally formed part of Elia's acute vindication of Malvolio, was omitted when the Essay was republished, to its manifest improvement. It is interesting as showing how real Shakespeare's creations were to Lamb. After the word "misrule," at the end of the first paragraph on page 390, the paper in the "London Magazine" continued :

There was "example for it," said Malvolio; "the lady of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe." Possibly, too, he might remember -for it must have happened about his time—an instance of a Duchess of Malfy (a countrywoman of Olivia's, and her equal at least) descending from her state to court a steward :

The misery of them that are born great!

They are forced to woo because none dare woo them.

To be sure, the lady was not very tenderly handled for it by her brothers in the sequel, but their vengeance appears to have been whetted rather by her presumption in re-marrying at all (when they had ineditated the keeping of her fortune in their family), than by her choice of an inferior, of Antonio's noble merits especially, for her husband; and, besides, Olivia's brother was just dead. Malvolio was a man of reading, and possibly reflected upon these lines, or something like them, in his own country poetry :