of him as lovingly as any one, remarked in his "Literary Reminiscences" in Hood's Own, probably with truth: As regards his Unitarianism, it strikes me as more probable that he was what the unco' guid people call "Nothing at all," which means that he was every thing but a Bigot. As he was in spirit an Old Author, so was he in faith an Ancient Christian, too ancient to belong to any of the modern sub-hubbub divisions of Ists, -Arians, and —Inians. And it is told of Lamb that he once complained that the Unitarians had robbed him of two-thirds of his God. I do not identify M, the friend to whom this letter was written. Page 314. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN. London Magazine, February, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb. This skit followed "The Biography of Mr. Liston" (page 292) which was printed in the preceding month's issue. Leigh Hunt, referring in his own Autobiography to this exercise of invention, says: "Munden he [Lamb] made born at 'Stoke Pogis;' the very sound of which was like the actor speaking and digging his words." To come to fact, Joseph Shepherd Munden (b. 1758) was the son of a poulterer in Leather Lane, Holborn, where he was born. At the age of twelve he was errand boy to an apothecary and afterwards was apprenticed to a law stationer. More than once-incited by admiration of Garrick-he ran away to join strolling companies, and at last he took to the stage altogether. Of his powers as an actor Lamb's other descriptions of him (see page 397 of this volume and the famous Elia essay) say enough. Munden's last appearance was on May 31, 1824. He died in 1832. His son was Thomas Shepherd Munden, who died, aged fifty, in 1850. He wrote his father's life. In Raymond's Memoirs of Elliston is an account of an excursion which Lamb once made with Elliston and Munden. I quote it in the notes in Vol. II. Page 317. THE "LEPUS" PAPERS. These papers appeared in The New Times at various dates in 1825. We know them to be Lamb's from internal evidence and from the following allusion in Crabb Robinson's MS. Diary preserved at Dr. Williams' Library : 66 'January 7, 1825. Called on Lamb and chatted. He has written in The New Times an article against visitors. He means to express his feelings towards young Godwin, for it is chiefly against the children of old friends that he humorously vents his spleen." The article in question, No. I. of the series, is No. X. of a series called Variorum. Lamb's signature, Lepus (a hare), is appended to all that are here included. The Variorum series lasted flaggingly until April, one of the last articles in it being Lamb's review of the Odes and Addresses (see page 335), which, however, was not signed Lepus. It then died. In August a new series, entitled "Sketches Original and Select," was begun, with an article-"A Character "—by Lepus, but this also soon flagged. Lamb does not seem to have contributed to it again. Page 317. I.-MANY FRIEnds. The New Times, January 8, 1825. Signed "Lepus." Another proof of Lamb's authorship of this essay will be found in a letter from him to Walter Savage Landor on October 9, 1832, where he writes : "Next, I forgot to tell you I knew all your Welsh annoyancers, the measureless B.'s. I knew a quarter of a mile of them. Seventeen brothers and sixteen sisters, as they appear to me in memory. There was one of them that used to fix his long legs on my fender, and tell a tale of a shark every night, endless, immortal. How have I grudged the salt-sea ravener not having had his gorge of him! The shortest of the daughters measured five foot eleven without her shoes. Well, some day we may confer about them. But they were tall. Truly, I have discover'd the longitude." Lamb also returned to the charge a little later in the Popular Fallacy "That Home is Home." The first idea for both this essay and the Fallacy we find in the letter to Mrs. Wordsworth dated February 18, 1818. Lamb also utilised a portion of this essay in his Popular Fallacy "That You must Love Me, and Love My Dog," published in February, 1826. Page 318, last line. Captain Beacham. From the letter to Landor we know this name to have disguised that of a brother of the Lambs' friend, Matilda Betham, the author of The Lay of Marie. Page 319. II. READERS AGAINST THE GRAIN. Page 322. Page 324. IV. TOM PRY. Allan Cunning The New Times, February 8, 1825. Signed "Lepus." The original of this character sketch was probably Thomas Hill, the drysalter, whom Lamb knew well. S. C. Hall's Book of Memories, p. 157, says: "His peculiar faculty was to find out what everybody did, from a minister of state to a stable-boy," etc. etc. John Poole's famous play "Paul Pry," in which Liston played so admirably, was not produced until September of this year, 1825. Lamb and Poole had a slight acquaintance through the London Magazine, to which Poole contributed dramatic burlesques. Lamb had given to the landlord in "Mr. H.," in 1806, the name and character of Pry. Page 324, line 5 of essay. Like the man in the play. Chremes, in the opening scene of the Heauton Timoroumenos by Terence (line 77), says: "Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto". am a man and to nothing that concerns mankind am I indifferent. 66 Page 325, line 8. Usque recurrit." Horace's Epist., I., x., lines 24-25 Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret, Et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix. (You may drive Nature out with a pitchfork, yet she will persistently return, and will stealthily break through depraved fancies, and be winner.) Page 326. V.-TOM PRY'S WIFE. The New Times, February 28, 1825. Signed "Lepus." In a letter from Lamb to the Kenneys, of which the date is uncertain, we get an inkling as to the identity of Mrs. Pry: You "I suppose you know we've left the Temple pro tempore. By the way, this conduct has caused many strange surmises in a good lady of our acquaintance. She lately sent for a young gentleman of the India House, who lives opposite her at Monroe's the flute shop in Skinner Street, Snowhill,-I mention no names. shall never get out of me what lady I mean,-on purpose to ask all he knew about us. I had previously introduced him to her whist table. Her inquiries embraced every possible thing that could be known of me-how I stood in the India House, what was the amount of my salary, what it was likely to be hereafter, whether I was thought clever in business, why I had taken country lodgings, why at Kingsland in particular, had I friends in that road, was anybody expected to visit me, did I wish for visitors, would an unexpected call be gratifying or not, would it be better that she sent beforehand, did any body come to see me, was not there a gentleman of the name of Morgan, did he know him, didn't he come to see me, did he know how Mr. Morgan lived, she could never make out how they were maintained, was it true he lived out of the profits of a linen draper's shop in Bishopsgate Street?" Mrs. Godwin's address was 41 Skinner Street. Again, Mary Lamb tells Sarah Hazlitt on November 7, 1809: "Charles told Mrs. Godwin Hazlitt had found a well in his garden which, water being scarce in your country, would bring him in two hundred a year; and she came in great haste the next morning to ask me if it were true." Page 327. VI.-A CHARActer. The New Times, August 25, 1825. Signed "Lepus." This differed from the five papers that have preceded it in inaugurating a new series entitled "Sketches Original and Select." Lepus, however, contributed no more. I have no idea who the original Egomet was, possibly an India House clerk. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, the Janus Weathercock_of_the_London Magazine, had occasionally used the pseudonym Egomet Bonmot, and Lamb may have borrowed it. Page 328, line 26. "There is no reciprocity." Lamb may have been remembering a story in Joe Miller about the reciprocity being "all on one side." Page 328, line 6 from foot. "Nimium vicini." In allusion to Virgil's (Ecl., IX., 28) “Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ "Mantua alas, too near ill-starred Cremona " (for it shared the fate of Cremona, which had rebelled against Augustus and suffered confiscation). Lamb comments in his "Popular Fallacies" upon Swift's punning use of the phrase. Page 329. REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. London Magazine, March, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb. The editor's note is undoubtedly Lamb's, as is, of course, the whole imaginary story. It must have been about this time that Lamb was writing his "Ode to the Treadmill" which appeared in The New Times in October, 1825. The pillory, which has not been used in this country since 1837, was latterly kept principally for seditious and libellous offenders. In May, 1812, for instance, Eaton, the publisher of Tom Paine's Age of Reason, stood in the pillory. The time was usually one hour, as in the case of Lamb's hero, the victim being a quarter turned at each fifteen minutes, in order that every member of the crowd might witness the disgrace. The offender's neck and wrists were fixed in holes cut for the purpose in a plank fastened crosswise to an upright pole. The London pillories were erected in different spotsat Charing Cross, in the Haymarket, in St. Martin's Lane, opposite the Royal Exchange, and elsewhere. Page 331, line 1. My friends from over the water. Referring to the prisoners in the King's Bench Prison at Southwark, who would be allowed out during the day-hence " ephemeral Romans," or freemen, and "flies of a day ": being obliged to return at night. (Shakespeare uses flies in this sense. "The slaves of chance and flies of every wind that blows," he says in "The Winter's Tale.") Lamb's friend, William Hone, was imprisoned in the King's Bench for a while from 1826, editing in confinement the end of his EveryDay Book and the whole of the Table Book. Page 332, lines 16 and 17. Bastwick... Prynne... Defoe .. Shebbeare. John Bastwick (1593-1654) was condemned to lose his ears in the pillory for writing the Letanie of Dr. John Bastwicke, an attack on the bishops.- William Prynne (1600-1669) was pilloried twice, the first time for his Histrio-Mastix (referred to by Lamb in the biography of Liston on page 292), and the second time for his support of Bastwick against the bishops, particularly Laud. He also lost his ears.-John Shebbeare (1709-1788) was pilloried for satirising the House of Hanover. An Irishman held an umbrella over his head the while.-Concerning Defoe and the pillory see Lamb's "Ode to the Treadmill" and note in the volume devoted to his poems and plays. Page 332, line 28. Charles closed the Exchequer. This was in 1671. In Green's Short History of the English People we read: "So great was the national opposition to his schemes that Charles was driven to plunge hastily into hostilities. The attack on a Dutch convoy was at once followed by a declaration of war, and fresh supplies were obtained for the coming struggle by closing the Exchequer, and suspending under Clifford's advice the payment of either principal or interest on loans advanced to the public Treasury." The present Royal Exchange was begun in 1842. Page 333. THE LAST PEACH. London Magazine, April, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb. Lamb's letter to Bernard Barton of December 1, 1824, warning him against peculation, probably suggested this essay, which contains yet another glimpse of Blakesware house and Lamb's boyhood there. Page 333, line 8. That unfortunate man. Henry Fauntleroy (1785-1824) was partner in the bank of Marsh, Sibbald & Co., of Berners Street. In 1815 he began a series of forgeries of trustees' signatures as he affirmed, entirely in the interests of the credit of the house, and in no way for his own gratification-which culminated in the failure of the bank in 1824. His trial caused intense excitement in the country. On November 2, 1824, sentence of death was passed, and on the 30th Fauntleroy was hanged. Many attempts were made to obtain a reprieve, and an Italian twice offered to suffer death in his place. The story was long current that Fauntleroy had secreted a silver tube in his windpipe, had thereby escaped strangulation, and was living abroad. This would appeal peculiarly to Lamb, since his essay on "The Inconveniences of Being Hanged " and his farce "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," alike bear on that subject. Page 335. "ODES AND Addresses TO GREAT PEOPLE." The New Times, April 12, 1825. Now reprinted for the first time. We know this review to be by Lamb from the evidence of a letter to Coleridge on July 2, 1825, in reply to one in which Coleridge taxed Lamb with the authorship of the book. Coleridge wrote: |