sympathetic pride. When he printed the play at the end of his Works, 1818, he prefixed a quotation from Hazlitt's essay on "Great and Little Things," of which this is a portion :—

Mr. H.-thou wert DAMNED. Bright shone the morning on the play-bills that announced thy appearance, and the streets were filled with the buzz of persons asking one another if they would go to see Mr. H., and answering that they would certainly; but before night the gaiety, not of the author, but of his friends, and the town, was eclipsed, for thou wert DAMNED!

Writing to Manning concerning the play's failure, Lamb said :— "Damn 'em, how they hissed! It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese, with roaring sometimes, like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that hiss'd me into madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God should give his favourite children, men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with, and that they should turn them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent labours of their fellow-creatures who are desirous to please them!" Page 101, line 3 of essay. That memorable season, 1806-1807. Lamb here exaggerates. It is true that ten new pieces were tried at Drury Lane in the season mentioned; but five were successful, and Monk Lewis's "Adelgitha," the only tragedy, could hardly be called a failure. Of the remaining four plays which failed, Holcroft's "Vindictive Man" was the most notable.

Page 101, line 9 of essay. The Clerk of Chatham.

Cade. Dost thou use to write thy name? or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest plain-dealing man?

Clerk of Chatham. Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up that I can write my name.

All. He hath confessed:

traitor.

away with him! he's a villain and a

Cade. Away with him, I say! hang him with his pen and ink-horn about his neck.

"II. Henry VI.," Act IV., Scene 2, lines 109-117.

Page 101, line 7 from foot. "The Vindictive Man." This was the comedy by Thomas Holcroft, Lamb's friend, the failure of which occurred a few nights before that of "Mr. H." Lamb describes the luckless performance in a letter to Manning dated December 5, 1806.

Page 102, line 5. "Our nonsense did not . . . suit their nonsense. From Burnet's History of His Own Times, Vol. II. : "He [Charles II.] told me he had a chaplain that was a very honest man, but a very great blockhead, to whom he had given a living

in Suffolk, that was full of that sort of people: he had gone about among them from house to house, though he could not imagine what he could say to them, for, he said, he was a very silly fellow, but that he believed his nonsense suited their nonsense; yet he had brought them all to church: and, in reward of his diligence, he had given him a bishopric in Ireland." (A note by Swift states the cleric to be Bishop Woolly of Clonfert.)

Page 102, line 25. A Syren Catalani. Angelica Catalani (17791849), one of the most beautiful of all singers.

Page 104, line 19. The O.P. differences. The O.P.-Old Prices Riots raged in 1809. On September 18 of that year the new Covent Garden Theatre was opened under the management of John Philip Kemble and Charles Kemble, with a revised price list. The opposition to this revision was so determined that "Macbeth," with John Philip Kemble as Macbeth, and Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth, was played practically in dumb show, and in the end the theatre was closed again for a while. The battle was waged not only by fists but by pamphlets. After two months' fighting a compromise was effected.

At the begin

Page 105, line 17. Obstinate, in John Bunyan. ning of the Pilgrim's Progress. It was not Obstinate, however, but Christian who put his fingers in his ears. Obstinate pursued and caught him. Lamb made the same mistake again in some verses to Bernard Barton.

A club of hissed authors existed in Paris in the 1870's. Flaubert, Daudet and Zola were members.

Page 107. ON BURIAL SOCIETIES; AND THE CHARACTER OF AN UNDERTAKER.

Reflector, No. III., 1811. The letter there begins "Sir." Printed again in part, in The Yellow Dwarf, January 17, 1818. Reprinted in the Works, 1818.

Page 110. The following short Essay. "The Character of an Undertaker" is, of course, Lamb's own. Sable is the undertaker in Sir Richard Steele's "Funeral; or, Grief à la Mode," 1702. Two of his remarks run thus: "There is often nothing more. deeply Joyful than a Young Widow in her Weeds and Black Train," and "The poor Dead are deliver'd to my Custody . . . not to do them Honour, but to satisfy the Vanity or Interest of their Survivors."

Page 112. ON THE TRAGEDIES OF SHAKESPEARE.

Printed in The Reflector, No. IV. (1811), under the title" Theatralia, No. I. On Garrick, and Acting; and the Plays of Shakespeare, considered with reference to their fitness for StageRepresentation." Reprinted in the Works, 1818.

At the close of the Reflector article Lamb wrote: "I have

hitherto confined my observation to the Tragic parts of Shakespeare; in some future Number I propose to extend this inquiry to the Comedies." The Reflector ending with the fourth number, the project was not carried out. From time to time, however, throughout his life, Lamb returned incidentally to Shakespearian criticism, as in several essays in the present volume, and the Elia essay "The Old Actors," with its masterly analysis of the character of Malvolio. David Garrick died in 1779, just before Lamb's fourth birthday. Lamb's father often talked of him.

Page 113, line 6. "To paint fair Nature," etc. These lines on Garrick's monument, which have been corrected from the stone, were by Samuel Jackson Pratt (1749-1814), the same author whose Gleanings Lamb described in a letter to Southey in 1798 as "a contemptible book, a wretched assortment of vapid feelings." Pratt's lines on Garrick were chosen in place of a prose epitaph written by Edmund Burke.

Page 114, line 23. Mr. K. John Philip Kemble (1757-1823), who first appeared as Hamlet in London at Drury Lane, September 30, 1783.

Page 114, line 24. Mrs. S. Mrs. Siddons, John Philip Kemble's sister (1755-1831). Her regular stage career ended on June 29, 1812, when she played Lady Macbeth. Her first part in London was Portia on December 29, 1775. Lamb admired her greatly. As early as 1794 he wrote, with Coleridge's collaboration, a sonnet on the impression which Mrs. Siddons made upon him.

Page 118, line 4. Banks and Lillo. John Banks, a very inferior Restoration melodramatist. George Lillo (1693-1739), the author among other plays of "George Barnwell-The London Merchant; or The History of George Barnwell," 1731 (mentioned a little later), which held the stage for a century. The story, the original of which is to be found in the Percy Reliques, tells how George, an apprentice, robs his master and kills his uncle at the instigation of Millwood, an adventuress. Lamb's footnote (page 118) refers to the custom, which was of long endurance, of playing "George Barnwell" in the Christmas and Easter holidays as an objectlesson to apprentices.

Page 121, line 25. The Hills and the Murphys and the Browns. Dr. John Hill (1716?-1775), the herbalist, controversialist, and miscellaneous writer, who quarrelled with Garrick. In The Reflector Lamb had written the Hooles. It was changed to Hills afterwards. Hoole would be John Hoole (1727-1803), translator of Tasso and the author of some turgid tragedies, who had been in his time an India House clerk. Arthur Murphy (1727-1805), actor and author, who wrote, in addition to many plays and books, a Life of Garrick (1801). The Rev. John Brown (1715-1766), the author of "Barbarossa" and "Athelstane," in both of which Garrick acted.

Page 122, line 8 from foot. Mr. C. G. F. Cooke. See above.

Page 123, line 25. Glenalvon. In Home's "Douglas." Lamb wrote an early poem on this tragedy, which seems to have so dominated his youthful imagination that when in 1795-1796 he was for a while in confinement he believed himself at times to be young Norval.

Page 127, line 12. A ghost by chandelier light . . . It should perhaps be borne in mind that in 1811, and for many years after, the stage was still lighted by candles, so that the regulation of light, which can be effected with such nicety on the modern stage, was then impossible. This is especially to be remembered with regard to such details as the presentation of the Witches in Macbeth." It would be simple enough, with our electric switchboard, to frighten a nervous child in that scene to-day.

Page 129, line 3. Webb. Webb was a theatrical robemaker at 98 Chancery Lane.

Page 130. SPECIMENS FROM THE WRITINGS OF FULLER. The Reflector, No. IV., 1812. Works, 1818. In The Reflector the signature Y was appended to the introductory paragraphs.

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), the divine and historian. The passages selected by Lamb are identified in the notes to my large edition, the references being to The Holy State, 1642; The History of the Worthies of England, 1662; A Pisgah-sight of Palestine and the Confines thereof, with the Histories of the Old and New Testaments acted thereon, 1650; and The Church History of Britain from the Birth of Jesus Christ until the year MDCXLVÍII., 1655. Lamb's transcriptions are, of course, not exact.

His

Page 135. Footnote. Fuller's bird. Lamb's friend Procter (Barry Cornwall) was also greatly impressed by this legend. English Songs, 1832, contains a poem on the subject.

Page 137. Footnote. Wickliffe's ashes. Landor has a passage on this subject in his poem "On Swift joining Avon near Rugby." Wordsworth's fine sonnet, in the Ecclesiastical Sketches, Part II., may have been suggested by this very quotation in Lamb's essay :--

WICLIFFE

Once more the Church is seized with sudden fear,

And at her call is Wicliffe disinhumed;

Yea, his dry bones to ashes are consumed,

And flung into the brook that travels near;

Forthwith that ancient Voice which streams can hear,

Thus speaks (that Voice which walks upon the wind,
Though seldom heard by busy human kind)-
"As thou these ashes, little Brook! wilt bear
Into the Avon, Avon to the tide

Of Severn, Severn to the narrow seas,
Into main Ocean they, this deed accurst

An emblem yields to friends and enemies

How the bold Teacher's Doctrine, sanctified

By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed."

When printed in The Reflector, in 1812, Lamb's footnote continued thus:

"We are too apt to indemnify ourselves for some characteristic excellence we are kind enough to concede to a great author, by denying him every thing else. Thus Donne and Cowley, by happening to possess more wit and faculty of illustration than other men, are supposed to have been incapable of nature or feeling; they are usually opposed to such writers as Shenstone and Parnel; whereas in the very thickest of their conceits,—in the bewildering maze of their tropes and figures, a warmth of soul and generous feeling shines through, the 'sum' of which forty thousand' of those natural poets, as they are called, with all their quantity, could not make up.'-Without any intention of setting Fuller on a level with Donne or Cowley, I think the injustice which has been done him in the denial that he possesses any other qualities than those of a quaint and conceited writer, is of the same kind as that with which those two great Poets have been treated."

6

Works, 1818.

Page 138. EDAX ON APPETITE. The Reflector, No. IV., 1811. Page 138, line 14 from foot. The best of parents. Lamb, of course, is not here autobiographical. His father was no clergyman. Page 139, line 21. Ventri natus, etc. These nicknames may be roughly translated: Ventri natus, glutton-born; ventri deditus, gluttony-dedicated; vesana gula, greedy gullet; escarum gurges, sink of eatables; dapibus indulgens, feast-lover; non dans fræna gulæ, not curbing the gullet; sectans lautæ fercula mensæ, daintyhunting.

Page 141, line 15. Mandeville. Bernard Mandeville (1670?1733), whose Fable of the Bees, 1714, was one of Lamb's favourite books.

Page 145. HOSPITA ON THE IMMODERATE Indulgence of the PALATE.

The Reflector, No. IV., 1811. Works, 1818. In The Reflector this letter followed immediately upon that of Edax (see page 138). In his Works Lamb reversed this order. In The Reflector the following footnote was appended, signed Ref.:—

To all appearance, the obnoxious visitor of HOSPITA can be no other than my inordinate friend EDAX, whose misfortunes are detailed, ore rotundo, in the preceding article. He will of course see the complaint that is made against him; but it can hardly be any benefit either to himself or his entertainers. The man's appetite is not a bad habit but a disease; and if he had not thought proper to relate his own story, I do not know whether it would have been altogether justifiable to be so amusing upon such a subject.