Page 116. Footnote. Fuller's bird. Lamb's friend Procter (Barry Cornwall) was also greatly impressed by this legend. His English Songs, 1832, contains a poem on the subject. Page 118. 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, 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." Page 118. Footnote, line 8. Act V., Scene 1, line 236. Page 118. Footnote, line 9. fused quotations, I imagine. Page 118. Hamlet. . . Cæsar. See "Hamlet,” “Ruined mortality." One of Lamb's From Gloucester. O! let me kiss that hand. Lear. Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality. " 'King Lear," Act IV., Scene 6, lines 133-137Footnote, line 19. "O that I were a mockery "Richard II.," Act IV., Scene 1, lines 260, 261: wrongly quoted. Page 118. Footnote, line 23. Oh, that my head were waters See Jeremiah IX. 1. Page 118. Footnote. When printed in The Reflector, in 1812, this 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." In a volume of various papers lettered "Tag Rag and Bobtail" in the Forster collection at South Kensington, Lamb has altered the words "such writers as Shenstone and Parnel" in the foregoing note to "what are called natural writers," and has taken out (three lines later) "as they are called." In The Indicator for January 3, 1821, Leigh Hunt printed certain scraps by Lamb (see note on page 443), among them being two passages from Fuller, which, though there is no proof that they are of Lamb's choosing, seem to me to be beyond doubt his choice. I find both copied into one of his Commonplace Books. These are they : "GUNPOWDER PLOT "Some days before the fatal stroke should be given, Master Keys [a conspirator] being at Tichmersh, in Northamptonshire, at the house of Mr. Gilbert Pickering, his brother-in-law, (but of a different religion, as a true Protestant) suddenly whipped out his sword, and in merriment made many offers therewith at the heads, necks, and sides, of many gentlemen and gentlewomen then in the company. This then was taken as a mere frolic, and for the present passed accordingly; but afterwards, when the treason was discovered, such as remembered his gestures, thought thereby he did act what he intended to do (if the plot had took effect) hack and hew, kill and slay, all eminent persons of a different religion from themselves.-Fuller's Church History. "BURNING OF HERETICS "Indeed such burning of heretics much startled common people, pitying all in pain, and prone to asperse justice itself with cruelty, because of the novelty and hideousness of the punishment. And the purblind eyes of vulgar judgments looked only at what was next to them (the suffering itself) which they beheld with compassion, not minding the demerit of the guilt which deserved the same. Besides, such being unable to distinguish betwixt constancy and obstinacy, were ready to entertain good thoughts even of the opinions of those heretics, who sealed them so manfully with their blood. Wherefore King James [the first] politickly preferred, that heretics hereafter, thus condemned, should silently and privately waste themselves away in the prison, rather than to grace them, and amuse others, with the solemnity of a public execution, which in popular judgments usurped the honour of a persecution.-Fuller's Church History." 1 1. Positively one is at a loss which to admire most in this passage; the tender mercies of the King, or the regretful look which this old Divine seems to have cast back upon the |