John Forster, in his memoir of Lamb in the New Monthly Magazine in 1835, has the following passage, which, applying to Lamb's later life (Forster was only twenty-two when Lamb died), rounds off the present London eulogium. The lines quoted by Forster are from "The Old Familiar Faces" (see Vol. V., page 23):

"We recollect being once sent by her [Mary Lamb] to seek Charles,' who had rambled away from her. We found him in the Temple, looking up, near Crown-office-row, at the house where he was born. Such was his ever-touching habit of seeking alliance with the scenes of old times. They were the dearer to him that distance had withdrawn them. He wished to pass his life among things gone by yet not forgotten; we shall never forget the affectionate Yes, boy,' with which he returned our repeating his own striking lines :—

6

"Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood,
Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse.

Page 39, line 5. on Lord Mayor's February 10.

Great annual feast. In stating that he was born Day Lamb stretched a point. His birthday was

Page 39, line 14. III., Scene 2, line 8;

Furred gown.

See "Measure for Measure," Act and "Lear," Act IV., Scene 6, line 169.

Page 39, line 21. A charming young woman. See the sonnets on pages 3, 4 and 7 of Vol. V. of this edition. Lamb's love of the country, at any rate as a place to walk in, returned late in life, in the Islington and Enfield days.

Silly sheep.

Page 39, line 31. Henry VI.'s phrase ("III. Henry VI.," Act. II., Scene 5, line 43). Lamb often uses it. See the passage on page 370 of this volume.

Page 40, line 23.

The foresters in Arden. See "As You Like It," Act II., Scene 1, lines 16, 17.

Page 40. CHARACTERS OF DRAMATIC WRITERS CONTEMPORARY WITH SHAKSPEARE.

Specimens, 1808, and Works, 1818.

These notes are abridgments of the notes to Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 1808. As that work is reproduced in Vol. IV. of the present edition, such annotation as seems desirable is reserved for that place. The abridgment is printed here in order that the text of Lamb's own edition of his Works, 1818, may be preserved.

LAMB'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE REFLECTOR

To the circumstance that Leigh Hunt edited The Reflector, which was founded by his brother in 1810 as a literary and political quarterly, may be attributed in a large measure the beginning of Lamb's career as an essayist. Leigh Hunt, himself a Christ's Hospitaller, sought

his contributors among old scholars of that school; from whom, as he remarked in the little note prefixed to the two-volume edition of the periodical, came "the largest and most entertaining part.” Among these contributors were Lamb, George Dyer, Thomas Barnes, afterwards editor of The Times, Thomas Mitchell, classical scholar, James Scholefield, afterwards Greek Professor at Cambridge, Hunt himself, and Barron Field, who, though not actually a Christ's Hospitaller, was through his father, Henry Field, the apothecary to the school, connected with it.

Until Lamb received Hunt's invitation to let his fancy play to what extent he would in The Reflector's pages, he had received little or no encouragement as a writer; and he was naturally so diffident that without some external impulse he rarely brought himself to do his own work at all. Between John Woodvil (1802) and the first Reflector papers (1810) he had written "Mr. H.," performed his share in the children's books, and compiled the Dramatic Specimens: a tale of work which, considering that it was also a social period, and a busy period at the India House, is not trifling. But between the last Reflector paper (1811 or 1812) and the first Elia essay (1820) Lamb seems to have written nothing save the essays on Christ's Hospital, the "Confessions of a Drunkard," a few brief notes, reviews and dramatic criticisms, mainly at the instigation of Leigh Hunt, and some scraps of verse chiefly for The Champion. The world owes a great debt to Leigh Hunt for discerning Lamb's gifts and allowing him free rein. The comic letters to The Reflector may not be Lamb at his best, though they are excellent stepping-stones to that state; but upon the essays on Shakespeare's tragedies and Hogarth's genius it is doubtful if Lamb could have improved at any period.

Lamb's contributions to The Reflector were as follows. In No. II. (in No. I. he had nothing) were the letters "On the Inconveniences Resulting from Being Hanged," "On the Danger of Confounding Moral with Personal Deformity," and "On the Probable Effects of the Gunpowder Treason," and, in the "Short Miscellaneous Pieces" at the end, "On the Ambiguities Arising from Proper Names." The first two he reprinted in the Works (1818); the third was incorporated in an article on "Guy Faux" in the London Magazine for November, 1823 (see page 236 of the present volume), but was not reprinted by Lamb in book form; nor was the note on proper names.

In The Reflector, No. III., appeared the essay "On the Genius of Hogarth," and the letters "On the Custom of Hissing at Theatres," and "On Burial Societies," of which Lamb reprinted the first and third, but not the second.

In The Reflector, No. IV., were: "The Tragedies of Shakespeare,” "Specimens from Fuller," "A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People," "A Farewell to Tobacco" (see Vol. V. of this edition), "Edax on Appetite," "Hospita on the Indulgence of the Palate," and "The Good Clerk.” All save "A Bachelor's Complaint" and "The Good Clerk" were reprinted in the Works (1818).

"A Bachelor's Complaint" was included in Elia, 1823 (see page 126 of Vol. II.).

In the Works (1818) Lamb also collected under the heading "Letters under Assumed Signatures, Published in The Reflector" two papers that had not been published there: "The Londoner," from the Morning Post (1802), and "The Melancholy of Tailors," from The Champion (1814).

The Reflector ran only to four numbers, which were very irregularly issued, and it then ceased. In the absence of dates I conjecture Nos. I., II. and III. to have been published in 1811, and No. IV. in 1812. Crabb Robinson mentions reading No. I. on May 15, 1811.

Lamb, it may be remarked here, was destined to contribute to yet another Reflector. In 1832 Moxon started a weekly paper of that name in which part of Lamb's Elia essay on the "Defect of Imagination in Modern Paintings" was printed. The venture, however, quickly failed, and all trace of it seems to have vanished (see notes to Vol. II.).

Page 56. ON THE INCONVENIENCES RESULTING From Being HANGED. The Reflector, No. II., 1811. Reprinted in the Works, 1818. Lamb made yet another use of the central idea of this essay. His farce, "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," written in 1825 (see Vol. V., page 212), turns upon the resuscitation of a hanged man, Jack Pendulous. Page 58, line 22. These faithful Achateses. Fidus Achates, the friend of Æneas.

Page 58, line 24.

to see, to notice.

Smoke his cravat. To smoke was old slang for East-enders to-day would say "Pipe his necktie !" Page 59, line 33. Phocion . . . Socrates. . . Raleigh... More. All condemned to death for so-called treasonable practices. Phocion, "the good," was an Athenian disciple of Plato and the trusted adviser of Alexander the Great. Under Antipater he was accused of treason and condemned to drink poison.

Page 61, line 23. Swift and Pope and Prior. See, for example, Swift's verses "On Clever Tom Clinch going to be Hanged; " Pope's famous line in The Rape of the Lock, III., 22.

And wretches hang that jury-men may dine;

and Prior's ballad, "The Thief and the Cordelier."

Page 61, line 26. Fielding and Smollett. Referring particularly perhaps to Fielding's Jonathan Wild the Great; but both writers are rich in allusions to the hangman's duties.

Page 61, line 27. Tom Brown. Tom Brown, of Shifnal, in Shropshire, Lamb often mentions him.

the comic writer and satirist (1663-1704).

Page 61, last line but three. The solution . . . in "Hamlet."

First Clown. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?

Second Clown. The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand tenants.
Act V., Scene 1, lines 46-50.