he may ever have indulged. The regularity of his attendance at the India House, and the liberal manner in which he was rewarded for that attendance, proved that he never could have been a drunkard. Well, indeed, would it be for the world if such extraordinary virtues as he possessed were often found in company with so very few faults.

In all modern editions of Lamb the "Confessions of a Drunkard" are included with the Last Essays of Elia. But Lamb did not himself originally place them there. Apparently his intention was not to reprint them after their appearance in the London Magazine in 1822. When, however, the Last Essays of Elia was published, in 1833, the paper called “A Death-Bed" was objected to by Mrs. Randal Norris, as bearing too publicly upon her poverty. When, therefore, the next edition was preparing, "A Death-Bed" was taken out, and the "Confessions" put in its place, but whether Lamb made the substitution, or whether it was decided upon after his death, I do not know.

Page 160. Footnote. Poor M- Probably George Morland, who died a drunkard in 1804. In The Life of George Morland, by George Dawe (Lamb's "Royal Academician "), we read: "When he [Morland] arose in the morning his hand trembled so as to render him incapable of guiding the pencil, until he had recruited his spirits with his fatal remedy."

Page 162. RECOLLECTIONS OF CHRIST'S HOSPITAL.

This article was first printed in the Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1813, and in the supplement for that year, under the title "On Christ's Hospital and the Character of the Christ's Hospital Boys." In that place it had the following opening, which, having lost its timeliness, was discarded when in 1818 the essay was printed in the Works:

"A great deal has been said about the Governors of this Hospital abusing their right of presentation, by presenting the children of opulent parents to the Institution. This may have been the case in an instance or two; and what wonder, in an establishment consisting, in town and country, of upwards of a thousand boys! But I believe there is no great danger of an abuse of this sort ever becoming very general. There is an old quality in human nature, which will perpetually present an adequate preventive to this evil. While the coarse blue coat and the yellow hose shall continue to be the costume of the school, (and never may modern refinement innovate upon the venerable fashion!) the sons of the Aristocracy of this country, cleric or laic, will not often be obtruded upon this seminary.

"I own, I wish there was more room for such complaints. I cannot but think that a sprinkling of the sons of respectable parents among them has an admirable tendency to liberalize the whole mass; and that to the great proportion of Clergymen's children in

particular which are to be found among them it is owing, that the foundation has not long since degenerated into a mere Charityschool, as it must do, upon the plan so hotly recommended by some reformists, of recruiting its ranks from the offspring of none but the very lowest of the people.

"I am not learned enough in the history of the Hospital to say by what steps it may have departed from the letter of its original charter; but believing it, as it is at present constituted, to be a great practical benefit, I am not anxious to revert to first principles, to overturn a positive good, under pretence of restoring something which existed in the days of Edward the Sixth, when the face of every thing around us was as different as can be from the present. Since that time the opportunities of instruction to the very lowest classes (of as much instruction as may be beneficial and not pernicious to them) have multiplied beyond what the prophetic spirit of the first suggester of this charity1 could have predicted, or the wishes of that holy man have even aspired to. There are parochial schools, and Bell's and Lancaster's, with their arms open to receive every son of ignorance, and disperse the last fog of uninstructed darkness which dwells upon the land. What harm, then, if in the heart of this noble City there should be left one receptacle, where parents of rather more liberal views, but whose time-straitened circumstances do not admit of affording their children that better sort of education which they themselves, not without cost to their parents, have received, may without cost send their sons? For such Christ's Hospital unfolds her bounty.

"To comfort, &c."

Concerning this original opening a few words are necessary. Lamb had found the impetus to write his article in the public charges of favouritism and the undue distribution of influence, that were made by Robert Waithman (1764-1833), the reformer, against the governors of Christ's Hospital, in an open letter to those gentlemen in 1808. The newspapers naturally had much to say on the question, which was for some time a prominent one. The Examiner, for example, edited by Leigh Hunt-himself an old Christ's Hospitaller-spoke thus strongly (December 25, 1808): "That hundreds of unfortunate objects have applied in vain for admission is sufficiently notorious; and that many persons with abundant means of educating and providing for their children and relatives have obtained their admission into the School is also equally well known." The son of the Vicar of Edmonton, Mr. Dawson Warren, and a boy named Carysfoot Proby, whose father had two livings as well as his own and his wife's fortune, were the chief scapegoats.

Coleridge also wrote an article on the subject, which appeared

"1 Bishop Ridley, in a Sermon preached before King Edward the Sixth."

in The Courier-a vigorous denial of Waithman's contention that the Hospital was intended for the poorest children, and the expression of a wish that the governors would permit no influence to change its aforetime policy. At the same time Coleridge expressed disapproval of the admission of boys whose fathers were in easy circumstances.

The Gentleman's Magazine version of Lamb's essay had one other difference from that of 1818. The second paragraph of the essay as it now stands did not then end at the words "would do well to go a little out of their way to see" (page 163). At the word "see" was a colon, and then came this passage:

"let those judge, I say, who have compared this scene with the abject countenances, the squalid mirth, the broken-down spirit, and crouching, or else fierce and brutal deportment to strangers, of the very different sets of little beings who range round the precincts of common orphan schools and places of charity."

Lamb's essay was also printed in a quaint little book entitled A Brief History of Christ's Hospital from its Foundation by King Edward the Sixth to the Present Time, by J. 1. W[ilson], published in 1820. It is there credited to Mr. Charles Lambe. In 1835, it was reissued as a pamphlet by some of Lamb's schoolfellows and friends"in testimony of their respect for the author, and of their regard for the Institution."

Christ's Hospital was founded in 1552 by Edward VI. in response to a sermon on charity by Ridley; his charge to Ridley being :

To take out of the streets all the fatherless children and other poor men's children that were not able to keep them, and to bring them to the late dissolved house of the Greyfriars, which they devised to be a Hospital for them, where they should have meat, drink, and clothes, lodging and learning, and officers to attend upon them.

Later, this intention was somewhat modified, with the purpose of benefiting rather the reduced or embarrassed parents than the very poor.

The London history of the school is now ended. The boys have gone to Sussex, where, near Horsham, the new buildings have been erected, and the old Newgate Street structure has been demolished to make room for offices, warehouses, and an extension of St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

John Lamb's appeal for his son Charles to be received into Christ's Hospital is dated March 30, 1781, and it states that the petitioner has "a Wife and three Children, and he finds it difficult to maintain and educate his Family without some Assistance." One of the children, John Lamb jr., then aged nearly eighteen, should, however, have been practically self-supporting. The presentation was made by Timothy Yeats, a friend of Samuel Salt, who himself signed the necessary bond for £100 and made himself responsible for the boy's discharge. Lamb was admitted July 17, 1782, and clothed October 9, 1782; he remained until November 23, 1789.

The notes that follow apply solely to the few points in the text that call for remark. More exhaustive comments on Lamb and Christ's Hospital will be found in the notes to the Elia essay on the same subject.

Page 163, line 23. The old Grey Friars. This monastery had been suppressed by Henry VIII. It was reinhabited by the Christ's Hospital boys; but was in great part destroyed in the Fire of London, the cloisters alone remaining. The other old part of Christ's Hospital, as this generation knows it, dates from after the Fire.

Page 165, line 9 from foot. Philip Quarll's Island. One of the imitations of Robinson Crusoe. The full title ran: The Hermit: or the unparalleled sufferings and surprising adventures of Mr. Philip Quarli, an Englishman, who was lately discovered by Mr. Dorrington, a Bristol Merchant, upon an uninhabited island in the South Seas; where he has lived above Fifty Years, without any human assistance, still continues to reside, and will not come away, 1727. Lamb refers again to these excursions in his Elia essay on Newspapers."

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Page 168, line 8 from foot. The Rev. James Boyer. Lamb writes more fully of his old schoolmaster in the Elia essay. Boyer was elected 1776, and retired in 1799, when the governors presented him with a staff. He died in 1814.

Page 170, line 4 from foot. Grecians. Lamb writes more fully of the Grecians in his Elia essay. He was himself never more than Deputy-Grecian.

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Page 171, line 4 from foot. William Wales. William Wales was appointed 1776, and died 1798. The King's Boys are now called Mathemats," i.e., Members of the Royal Mathematical Foundation for Sea Service. Leigh Hunt says of William Wales in his Autobiography: "He was a good man, of plain, simple manners, with a heavy large person and a benign countenance. When he was at Otaheite, the natives played him a trick while bathing, and stole his small-clothes; which we used to think a liberty scarcely credible."

Page 172, line 5 from foot. Processions . . . at Easter. The boys when in London visited the Lord Mayor on Easter Tuesday. Page 173, line 4. St. Matthew's day. September 21. Speech Day is now at the end of the Summer Term. Page 173, line 8. Barnes Markland .. Camden. Joshua Barnes (1654-1712), Greek scholar and antiquary; Jeremiah Markland (1693-1776), Greek scholar; and William Camden (15511623), the antiquary-all Christ's Hospital boys.

Page 173, line 18. The carol. I cannot give the words of this particular carol. Mr. E. H. Pearce, the latest historian of Christ's Hospital, tells me that it was probably not a school carol peculiar to Christ's Hospital, like the Easter anthems (which were composed annually), but an ordinary Christmas hymn. "An old

Crug," i.e., Old Christ's Hospitaller, wrote to Notes and Queries, December 22, 1855, asking if any reader could supply the missing stanzas of a Christmas carol which the Blue Coat boys used to sing fifty years before. This was one stanza (from memory) :— The wise men of the Eastern globe did spy

Page 174.

A blazing star in the bright glittering sky;
And well they knew it fully did portend,
Christ came to the earth for some great end.

TABLE-TALK IN "THE EXAMINER."

In 1813 Leigh Hunt added to his paper, The Examiner, a more or less regular collection of notes under the heading "Table Talk." At first they were unsigned, but on May 30 he announced that each contributor would in future have his own mark. From unmistakable evidence-for example, the similarity between the "Playhouse Memoranda" on page 184, and the Elia essay "My First Play' -we may confidently consider Lamb to be the author of all those pieces signed, like that, ‡, seven of which are here included. The first contribution thus signed was the note on Reynolds and Leonardo da Vinci," on page 174, usually printed in editions of Lamb's works as "The Reynolds Gallery."

Lamb had other signatures in The Examiner. The Dramatic Criticisms and Reviews of Books, pages 217 to 234, were signed with four stars; the notice of "Don Giovanni in London" (see page 215) was signed †, and “Valentine's Day” (in Elia) was signed

*

**

Page 174.

I. REYNOLDS AND LEONARDO DA VINCI.

The Examiner, June 6, 1813.

Lamb had very little admiration for Sir Joshua Reynolds. See also his remarks in the essay on "Hogarth," page 88 for example. Page 174, line 1 of essay. The Reynolds' Gallery. The exhibition of 142 of Sir Joshua Reynolds' works, held in 1813 at the Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, afterwards the British Institution. The Marlborough Club now stands on its site. Reynolds had died in 1792.

Page 174, line 9 of essay. Mrs. Anne Clark. The notorious Mary Anne Clarke (1776-1852), the mistress of Frederick, Duke of York. After keeping London society in a state of ferment for some years, by reason of her disclosures and claims, she was, in 1813, condemned to nine months' imprisonment for libel. Lamb has a very humorous passage about this lady in a letter to Manning on March 28, 1809. Reynolds, it need hardly be said, did not paint her, since, when he died, she was but sixteen and a nobody.-Kitty Fisher was Catherine Maria Fisher, who died in 1767, and was painted by Sir Joshua several times. A very notorious person in her early days; afterwards she married an M.P.

Page 174, line 7 from foot. Mrs. Long. Mrs. Long was Amelia