extinguished fires of Smithfield. Through all the coyness of the confession, and the little more than hints which he broaches on this delicate subject, it is easy to discover, that those smothered brands had left as strong a relish and savor of fire in his nostrils, as the odour of the old fleshpots did upon the palates of the rebellious manna-sick Jews. He would fain be blowing up the dead coals again, though he offers at it reluctantly, and lights the pyre (as the ancients did in their funeral rites) with averted eyes. Yet Fuller appears to have been a humane kind-hearted man (where heretics were not concerned); and could see the enormity of hacking and hewing,' 'killing and slaying' persons of an opposite faith,' when that faith was his own."

The first of these passages we meet with again in Hone's Every-Day Book, Vol. II., November 5, 1826, introduced thus by Hone :

Though it is not requisite to relate more particulars of the "gunpowder treason" than have been already mentioned, yet a friendly finger points to a passage in an old writer, concerning one of the conspirators, which is at least amusing.

Hone had at his service (see note on page 506) no friendlier finger than Lamb's, and none more likely to point to Fuller.

The Reflector, No. IV., 1812. Works, 1818.

Page 119, line 6. "Quibus hunc lenire," etc. From Horace's Epist., I., i., lines 34-35:—

Sunt verba et voces, quibus hunc lenire dolorem

Possis, et magnam morbi deponere partem.

(There be words and charms whereby you may assuage this pain, and shake off great part of your disorder.)

Translated by Pope :

Know there are rhymes, which, fresh and fresh applied,
Will cure the arrant'st puppy of his pride.

Pope, Horace, Epist., I., lines 59-60.
The best of parents. Lamb, of course, is not
His father was no clergyman.

Page 119, line 14. here autobiographical. Page 120, line 3. Ventri natus, etc. These nicknames may be roughly translated: Ventri natus, glutton-born; ventri deditus, gluttonydedicated; vesana gula, greedy gullet; escarum gurges, sink of eatables; dapibus indulgens, feast-lover; non dans fræna gulæ, not curbing the gullet; sectans lautæ fercula mense, dainty hunting.

Page 120, third line from foot. Cup of old Baucis. See Ovid's Metamorphoses, VIII., 677-683.

Page 121, lines 5 and 8. Heliogabalus . . Curii . . . Dentati. Heliogabalus was the most extravagantly luxurious of the Roman Emperors. The Curii and Dentati were so named after Curius Dentatus Marcus Annius, a Roman general, famous for his victories and his frugality and plainness of living.

Page 121, line 27. Ordinance given to Noah. See Genesis IX. 2

and 3.

Page 121, line 29. Mandeville. Bernard Mandeville (1670 ?-1733), whose Fable of the Bees, 1714, was one of Lamb's favourite books. See extracts from it on pages 423-428. The story of the merchant and

the lion is in Remark P. of The Fable of the Bees, 1723 edition. 1 have restored Mandeville's capitals.

Page 123, second paragraph. I have read in Pliny... Lamb must, I think, have been remembering dimly Pliny's account of the Basilisk (Natural History, Part I., 8th Book, Chapter XXI., in Holland's translation, 1634 edition): "He killeth all trees and shrubs, not onely that he toucheth, but also that hee breatheth vpon; as for grasse and herbes, those he sindgeth and burneth vp, yea, and breaketh stones in sunder; so venimous and deadly he is."

Page 123, third paragraph. adaptation of Virgil's line :

O fortunate, too fortunate. . . An

O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint
Agricolas-

Georgics, II., 458.

"O husbandmen, too happy, if they knew their good fortune."

Page 124. HOSPITA ON THE Immoderate Indulgence of the Palate. The Reflector, No. IV., 1812. Works, 1818. In The Reflector this letter followed immediately upon that of Edax (see page 118). 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.

Page 125, second line from foot. Pythagoreans. In Malvolio's words, Pythagoras taught that "the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird" ("Twelfth Night," Act IV., Scene 2, line 57). Hence vegetarianism should be practised.

Mr. Malthus.

Page 126, second paragraph.
Thomas Robert
Malthus (1766-1834), author of the Essay on Population, 1798. He
wrote On the High Price of Provisions in 1800.

Page 127. THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER.

The Reflector, No. IV., 1812. Signed L. B., possibly as the first and last letters of Lamb. Not reprinted by Lamb.

Page 129, line 28. "The gripple merchant," etc. From Drayton's lines"Upon the noble Lady Aston's Departure for France "island" for "isle."

Page 129, line 30. That curious book by Daniel Defoe. Defoe's Complete English Tradesman was published in 1725 (Vol. I.) and 1727 (Vol. II.).

Page 129. Footnote. George Barnwells. See note on page 416. Page 130, line 4. The Grand Jury of Middlesex. The second edition of Mandeville's cynical work, The Fable of the Bees, 1723, containing the "Essay on Charity," and the "Search into the Nature of Society," was presented as a nuisance by the Grand Jury of Middlesex in that year. It was held to have an immoral tendency, but the book

was not suppressed.

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