are appointed for those that know how to afflict, trouble, destroy it.
Page 178, last line. What could Pope mean?
What made (say Montaigne, or more sage Charron)
Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon?
Pope's Moral Essays, Ep. I., 87–88.
It has been held that Pope called Charron more sage because he somewhat mitigated the excessive fatalism (Pyrrhonism) of Montaigne.
Page 179. IV.—[A Sylvan Surprise.]
The Examiner, September 12, 1813. Reprinted in The Indicator, January 3, 1821. We know it to be Lamb's by the signature ‡; also from a sentence in Leigh Hunt's essay on the "Suburbs of Genoa," in The Literary Examiner, August 23, 1823, where, speaking of an expected sight, he says: "C. L. could not have been more startled when he saw the chimney-sweeper reclining in Richmond meadows."
Page 179. V.—[Street Conversation.]
The Examiner, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡.
Page 180. VI.—[A Town Residence.]
The Examiner, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡.
This note is another contribution to Lamb's many remarks on London. Allsop, in his reminiscences of Lamb in his Letters, Conversations and Recollections of S. T. Coleridge, 1836, remarks:—
Somerset House, Whitehall Chapel (the old Banqueting Hall), the church at Limehouse and the new church at Chelsea, with the Bell house at Chelsea College, which always reminded him of Trinity College, Cambridge, were the objects most interesting to him [Lamb] in London.
Page 181. VII.—[Gray's "Bard."]
The Examiner, September 12, 1813. Signed ‡. Reprinted by Leigh Hunt under the above title in The Indicator, December 13, 1820. In the Appendix (pages 425–6) will be found other critical comments upon Gray, which I conjecture to be Lamb's.
Page 181, line 1 of essay. The beard of Gray's bard.
Loose his beard, and hoary hair
Stream'd like a meteor, to the troubled air.
The Bard.
Gray himself noted the Miltonic anticipation of this line (see Gosse's edition, 1884). The lines Lamb quotes are from Paradise Lost, I., lines 536–537.
Page 181, line 6 of essay. Heywood's old play. "The Four 'Prentices of London," by Thomas Heywood. The speech is that of Turnus respecting the Persian Sophy. It is copied in one of Lamb's Commonplace Books.
Page 182. VIII.—[An American War for Helen.]
The Examiner, September 26, 1813. Signed ‡. Reprinted under the above title by Leigh Hunt in The Indicator, January 3, 1821.
line 1 of essay. A curious volume. Hazlitt's Handbook to the Popular, Poetical and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain, 1867, gives the title as Alexandri Fultoni Scoti Epigrammatum Libri Quimque. Perth, 1679. 8vo.
Page 182, line 9. "The master of a seminary … at Islington." This was the Rev. John Evans, a Baptist minister, whose school was in Pullin's Row, Islington. Gray's Elegy was published as Lamb indicates in 1806. The headline covering the first three stanzas is "Interesting Silence."
Page 183. IX.—[Dryden and Collier.]
The Examiner, September 26, 1813. Signed ‡.
Page 183, line 3. Jeremy Collier. Jeremy Collier (1650–1726), the nonjuror and controversialist. His Essays upon Several Moral Subjects, Part II., were published in 1697. The passage quoted is from that "On Musick," the second essay in Part II. I have restored his italics and capitals.
Page 183, at foot. "His genius. …" Collier's words are: "His genius was jocular, but when disposed he could be very serious."
Page 184. X.—[Playhouse Memoranda.]
The Examiner, December 19, 1813. Signed ‡. Leigh Hunt reprinted it in The Indicator, December 13, 1820.
The paper, towards the end, becomes a first sketch for the Elia essay "My First Play," 1821. As a whole it is hardly less charming than that essay, while its analysis of the Theatre audience gives it an independent interest and value.
Page 185, line 3. They had come to see Mr. C——. It was George Frederick Cooke, of whom Lamb writes in the criticism on page 41, that they had come to see. Possibly the Cooke they saw was T. P. Cooke (1786–1864), afterwards famous for his sailor parts; but more probably an obscure Cooke who never rose to fame. A Mr. Cook played a small part in Lamb's "Mr. H." in 1806.
Page 186, line 6. The system of Lucretius. Lucretius, in De Rerum Natura, imagined the gods to be above passion or emotion, heedless of this world's concerns, figures of absolute peace.
Page 186, line 22. It was "Artaxerxes." An opera by Thomas Augustine Arne, produced in 1762, founded upon Metastasio's "Artaserse." From the other particulars of Lamb's early play-going, given in the Elia essay "My First Play," we know the date of this performance to be December 1, 1780, that being the only occasion in that or the next season when "Artaxerxes" was followed by "Harlequin's Invasion." But none of the singers named by Lamb were in the caste on that occasion. "Who played, or who sang in it, I know not," he says; merely setting down likely and well-known names at random. As a matter of fact Artaxerxes was played by Mrs. Baddeley, Arbaces by Miss Pruden, and Mandane by "a young lady." Mr. Beard was John Beard (1716?-1791), the tenor. Leoni was the discoverer and instructor of Braham. He made his début in "Artaxerxes" in 1775. Mrs. Kennedy, formerly Mrs. Farrell, was a contralto. She died in 1793.
Page 186, line 10 from foot. I was, with Uriel.
Th'
