Selected essays of Lamb

Front matter

BEMENT

Book . hS A.

Copyright }j°

Preface

My aim in the preparation of this edition has been to facilitate rapid and interested reading of such of the ^* Essays of Elia " as will most appeal to the average student. Lamb's style, however, presents difficulties; and his vocabulary, drawn largely from his sixteenth and seventeenth century favorites, contains many obsolete words and archaic forms. I have endeavored, by means of footnotes, to smooth away all these difficulties, and to make the way still easier by thus explaining many words and peculiarities of diction that do not fall under the classification named. For it is undoubtedly true that much of the interest which a course in Lamb ought to rouse in young readers will be crushed if free and rapid reading of the text be hampered by the obscurities of Lamb's style and language. If it is urged that the '' dictionary habit " will not be formed where so much of this work is done for the student, I may reply that the notes are sufficiently few and Lamb 's vocabulary is sufficiently large to afford ample opportunity for training in the use of the dictionary; and that more important than the '^ dictionary habit '' is

V vi PEEFACE

the desirability of loving '' the gentle Charles," and forming a taste for his quaint and incisive style.

I have also included as footnotes brief explanations of Lamb's less important allusions — allusions which the well-read student need not master, but which he should understand in order to get a clear grasp of the subject-matter.

In a separate group at the back of the book are explanatory notes on those allusions which seem to me important, whether intrinsically or because of the context; and these the student should make his own. Not the least value which Lamb presents as an author for school study is the compelling stimulus of his immense range of reading. His illustrative allusions and quotations are almost coextensive with literature itself; and to follow him at all, the student must inform himself with regard to many of these. This should be made a pleasure, not a burden; for Lamb's allusions are always so apropos, never '' dragged in by the heels," as Lamb said was the case with some puns, that interest in mastering them need never flag. A student cannot lay aside his text at the end of the course, if he has done his work at all well, without being immensely broader in general information and culture. I have aimed throughout, in view of the decadence of classical study in many schools, to make the notes sufficiently full in the case of every allusion to mythology. I believe a special point should be made of stimulating interest in these allusions.

PKEFACE vii

Quotations exact, quotations inexact, and mere fragments of random recollections are all found on every page of the essays. The temptation of every editor is, of course, to trace all these to their source. In the main, no good can be gained by burdening a school text with the sources of many quotations, save where the source would, in all probability, be known to the student. I have endeavored to let this criterion be my guide in deciding, in general, when to cite original passages. Most direct quotations, however, I have traced to their sources ; depending, where my own memory or information was deficient, upon Ainger and Lucas, whose scholarship has supplied many a recondite allusion.

Nearly all teachers require the student to reproduce his impressions of the books he has read. This practice conduces to more faithful and retentive reading, and will not, when rightly guided, kill interest in the literature studied. Where teachers are preparing students for the college examinations, constant practice in theme writing on subjects taken from the literature is, of course, essential. Lamb's essays are so discursive, and many of them are so lacking in unity, that in most cases the titles of the essays themselves do not afford sufficiently suggestive titles for short class-room themes. There has been prepared, therefore, a list of suggested topics for written work, in which the principal points of each essay are made titles for short themes.

In preparing this edition I have, as has every other editor of Lamb, been under deepest obligation to the viii PKEFACE

work of Canon Ainger, whose edition of Lamb's works and whose unequaled biography are testimony to the most painstaking labor. Of the newer editions I have had constantly by me for consultation the admirable edition of E. V. Lncas. This must be considered the definitive edition of Lamb's works. Of the editions of the ** Essays of Elia/' that by Messrs. Hallward and Hill is most fully annotated, and I am indebted to it for many helpful suggestions. No editors have so cleverly run down many of Lamb's half -quotations and remote allusions.

I am indebted to Prof. Fred N. Scott, of the University of Michigan, and to Dr. J. A. Lester and Mr. F. W. Pine, of the Hill School, for helpful suggestions. To Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons, I am indebted for permission to reprint from Lucas' edition, above referred to, the map of the Temple. H. B.

The Hill School, June, 1910.

Contents

PRINCIPAL WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB BIBLIOGRAPHY

Introduction

The Life of Charles Lamb

Lamb's Appearance and Personality .

The Essay ......

Lamb as an Essayist: The Quahties of His Art

Mary Lamb ......

The Inns of Court .....

TOPICS FOR WRITTEN WORK LAMB'S KEY . . . .

ESSAYS

si I. The South Sea House

II. Christ's Hospital Five-and-Thirty Years

III. The Two Races of Men

IV. New Year's Eve *^ V. A Chapter on Ears .

VI. A Quakers' Meeting

VII. My Relations .

VIII. Mackery End, in Hertfordshire

IX. Imperfect Sympathies

\X. The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple

XL Witches and Other Night-Fears

XII. Grace Before Meat

XIII. Dream-Children: A Reverie .

XIV. Distant Correspondents .

ix

Ago

PAGE

xi xii

XV

xxix

xxxiv xxxvi

xli

xliii

xlviii

lii

CONTENTS

^ XV. The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers

^VI. A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig

. XVII. A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People

XVIII. Modern Gallantry .

XIX. Old China

XX. Poor Relations

XXI. The Old Margate Hoy

XXII. Blakesmoor in H shire

XXIII. The Superannuated Man

PAGE

155 166

THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF CHARLES LAMB

(Arranged Chronologically)

1794. Sonnet on Mrs. Siddons (earliest published work).

1796. Sonnets (published with Coleridge's poems).

] 798. Rosamund Gray. The Old Familiar Faces.

1802. John Woodvil. Ballads.

1803. Hester.

1805. Farewell to Tobacco.

1807. Tales from Shakespeare (with Mary Lamb).

1808. Adventures of Ulysses. Specimens of English Dramatic

Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare.

1809. Mrs. Leicester's School (with Mary Lamb). Poetry for

Children (with Mary Lamb).

1811. The Genius and Character of Hogarth. Contributions to the Reflector.

1818. Complete Works, in two volumes (Olhers).

1820-3. Essays of Elia, in the London Magazine.

1823. Essays of Elia, first series (Taylor and Hessey).

1823-6. Essays for the London, and other magazines.

1828. Popular Fallacies, in the New Monthly.

1830. Album Verses (Moxon).

1833. Essays of Elia, second series (Moxon).

xi

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lamb's Works:

The Works of Charles Lamb, edited by Alfred Ainger.

Macmillan & Co. . (Eversley Edition.) The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, edited by E. V.

The Works of Charles Lamb, edited by William Mac-

DONALD. London: J. M. Dent & Co.

Biographical :

Charles Lamb, by x4lLFRed Ainger (English Men of Letters Series).

The Life of Charles Lamb (in preparation), by E. V. Lucas. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

The Letters of Charles Lamb, with a Sketch of his Life (in reprints), by T. N. Talfourd.

The Final Memorials of Charles Lamb (in reprints), by T. N. Talfourd.

Sidelights on Charles Lamb, by Bertram Dobell. Charles Scribner's Sons.

Charles Lamb; a Memoir, by B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall).

Dictionary of National Biography,

Works containing interesting material regarding Lamb :

Autobiography, Leigh Hunt.

Literary Reminiscences, by Thomas Hood. De Quineey's Works, Vol. V.

Autobiography and Journals, Haydon.

Diary, Henry Crabb Robinson.

The Works of William Hazlitt, and Memoirs of William Hazlitt, by W. Carew Hazlitt. xii

BIBLIOGRAPHY xiii

Reference Books for Use in Reading the Essays : Smith's (or some other) Classical Dictionary. Gayley's Classic Myths, Shakespeare's Works.

Words and their Ways in English Speech, Hogarth's Works.

Macdonald's Edition of Essays of Elia (for the illustrations).

Lucas's edition of Essays of Elia (for the notes).

INTRODUCTION

THE LIFE OF CHARLES LAMB

The life of Lamb combines so many seemingly contradictory elements that it challenges our interest at once; for it is a life filled with the heroic and the pathetic, the tragic and the comic; a life crowded with disappointments, but lighted by the sunniest of dispositions; a life filled with human weaknesses, but crowned with the noblest of self-sacrifice. It may be urged that all lives combine these elements to some degree; but in Lamb's case these contradictory phases stand out in their extremes.

Let us take a glimpse at the actual facts of Lamb's life, and then go back to gather up the threads of it, and see to just what extent his life did exhibit these seemingly irreconcilable characteristics which have been mentioned.

I. Birth and Early Life (1775-1782).— Charles Lamb was a city child. His father, John Lamb, who had come to London a country boy to seek his fortune, was clerk and general assistant to Samuel Salt, a lawyer. Like all London lawyers. Salt had chambers in one of the Inns of Court,^ in a building known as Crown Office Row, Inner Temple.^ Here, at No. 2, in the very heart of London, Charles Lamb was born on. February 10, 1775.

1 See page xliii of the Introduction.

2 See map on page xlvi.

XV

XVI

INTKODUCTION

He was the youngest of seven children, only three of whom, however, survived the period of early childhood. The other two, of whom we shall hear much, were

No. 2 Crown Office Row.

Lamb's Birthplace.

John Lamb, Jr., and Mary Lamb, the former twelve and the latter ten years older than Charles.

Charles Lamb was born to poverty. His father's position paid well enough, but the demands on his income were great, and the family seems always to have been in a state of financial embarrassment. To the boy, however, these early cares and struggles probably meant nothing. He was busy in and out among the cloisters, gardens, and fountains of the Inner Temple,^ and was occupied by his early schooling under Mr. Bird in Fetter Lane. Mr. Bird's was a day school for boys and a night school for girls, whose advantages Mary Lamb shared, therefore, with her brother, although Lamb says he is sure that neither of them ever brought anything away from the school but a little of their native English.

" The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," page 102,

INTRODUCTION xvu

11. Life at Christ's Hospital (1782-1789).'— At seven years of age Lamb went from the ancient Inner Temple to the ancient '' Blue-coat School," Christ's Hospital, passing thus from ^ ' cloister to cloister ' ' ; for both these old groups of buildings were originally monasteries.

His early days at Christ's w^ere trying ones. His impressions of them Lamb has himself recounted with sufficient fullness in the essay '^ Recollections of Christ's Hospital Five-and-thirty Years ago " ^ : how the boys dined in the great hall, fared forth on holidays to the

Supper at Christ^s Hospital.

country or the Tower, frolicked through their lessons under mild Dr. Field, and tremblingly conned their Greek and Latin under the birch of rabid Dr. Boyer. In the essay " New Year's Eve," Lamb recalls fleeting impressions of his childhood at Christ's;^ and in the

1 See essay on " Christ's Hospital," page 14.

2 See page 15ff. 3 See page 45. 2 xviii INTRODUCTION

essay *^ Witches and Other Night Fears/ ^ he conjures up again the fearful images that visited his motherless pillow.^

His was a slight, shy figure, not assertive nor forward. His ability to make friends was handicapped by his habit of stammering; but those who grew to know him loved him. Gentle is the adjective that best described him then, and that clung to him in later life; and Charles Valentine Le Grice recalls that a certain peculiar fondness for the boy was evidenced at Christ's in their always speaking of him as Charles Lamb, never omitting the Christian name, though custom decreed use of the surname only.

The friendship between Lamb and Coleridge, who were fellow-students at Christ's, w^as the natural upspringing of a boyish regard, founded on mutual interests. Each was bookish ; each was inclined to dreaminess and abstraction. Coleridge, who was three years Lamb's senior, exercised the stronger influence, and soon had completely dominated Lamb's sensitive mind. Together the boys talked, speculated, read the classics, and pored over Bowles's sonnets, the first great poetical influence in both their lives.

At Christ's Hospital Lamb laid the foundation for that long course of self-education which was to follow. He rose to be Deputy-Grecian (next to the highest class), being especially proficient in Latin composition. He w^ould naturally have gone on to one of the universities; but it was expected that those who did should prepare for the ministry, and this Lamb's habit of stammering precluded. Furthermore, the boy was needed at home that he might contribute somewhat to

1 See page 124.

INTKODUCTION xix

the support of the family, for John Lamb'^ mind was gradually failing, and the family was seriously embarrassed financially. And so, in 1789, Lamb passed out from the cloisters of Christ's Hospital and faced the future, the clouds of which were already hanging low.

III. Time of "Storm and Stress" (1789-1796).— The time was now at hand when Charles Lamb was to show the stuff of which he was made, for during the next seven years came the trials that w^ere to test his character : the necessity, at fifteen, of going to work to buoy up the ebbing fortunes of his family, disappointed hopes in love, a period of insanity, and, finally, the death of his mother at the hand of Mary Lamb.

In 1789, or soon after, Charles Lamb obtained an introduction to the South Sea House through his brother, John, who held a good appointment there. A minor clerkship for the younger brother resulted — as far as the records show the only benefit of whatsoever sort that Charles ever received from John. John Lamb, though an able accountant, seems never to have felt the burden of any responsibility. While the family was suffering in poverty, owing to the father's decaying powers, and while Mary Lamb was taking in sewing, John was absent in bachelor quarters,^ enjoying life and spending his income. He thus idly bequeathed to his younger brother the responsibilities that should have belonged to the older by right of primogeniture, and Charles, then as later, uncomplainingly took up the burden. The South Sea clerkship lasted until 1792, w^hen Lamb received a more lucrative appointment in the East India House. In the meantime his social re-

1 For Lamb's account of his brother, whom he calls James Elia in the essays, see pages 73-80.

XX INTRODUCTION

laxations were taken with Coleridge and James White/ talking of literature and dreaming of authorship ; and he spent an occasional holiday with his grandmother Field at Blakesware, in Hertfordshire. ^ On one of the visits to this place, which he has so charmingly described in one of his essays,^ he met Ann Simmons, the '' Alice Winterton ' ' of the essays.*

Lamb has told us a little, in his veiled way, of his feeling for this fair-haired girl. How far his passion took possession of him, whether he ever spoke his heart or not, whether she in any way returned his affection — these questions will never be answered. We do know that by 1796 the understanding between them, if any, was broken off; and in this year Lamb, yielding to the hereditary taint, lost his reason, and spent six weeks in an asylum in Hoxton.

In September of this same year came heavier trouble. The family, in desperate financial straits, had removed from their old quarters in the Temple to Little Queen Street. Mrs. Lamb was a confirmed invalid ; Mr. Lamb, like Lot of Orkney, beside the hearth lay '' like a log, and all but smoulder 'd out ''; Charles had been absent at Hoxton; and the burden of it all fell upon Mary. Her reason too gave way; and, in a sudden passion of murderous insanity, she seized a knife from the table and stabbed her mother to death. She also wounded her father in the head, but Charles was by to prevent more bloody execution. This terrible tr^^edy

1 James, or Jem. White is referred to on pages 154. 162-165.

2 This is the Norfolk of the essay, " Dream-Children," page 140.

3 The essay " Blakesmoor in H shire," in the second series

of the " Essays of Elia." See page 223.

4 See pages 44, 50, and the whole of the essay, " Dream-Children," on page 140.

INTEODUCTION xxi

was enough to have sent Charles again to the mad-house ; but, strange to say, it had the opposite effect. He says in a letter to his constant correspondent, Coleridge, written in that same week: '' God be praised, Coleridge, -wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once been otherwise than collected and calm; ... On that first evening, my aunt lying insensible, to all appearance like one dying — my father, with his poor forehead plastered over, from a wound he had received from a daughter dearly loved by him, who loved him no less dearly — my mother a dead and murdered corpse in the next room — ^yet was I wonderfully supported. ' '

But what was to be done with Maryl She was at once put in confinement, but soon recovered her reason — was restored '^ to a dreadful sense and recollection of Avhat had past.'' Despite her acquittal by a jury and the restoration of her reason, John Lamb, Jr., advocated her confinement, fearing a return of the madness, and being unwilling to stand sponsor for her in case of her release. Charles saw his duty in a different light, and entered into a formal contract to guard and support his afflicted sister. The older brother lent neither his approval nor his financial assistance. John Lamb, Sr., died a few months later; the old aunt followed within a few weeks; and thus it was that these two alone faced a future black with insanity, poverty, and isolation. For though Charles never had another attack of insanity, Mary frequently succumbed. ^^ The attacks seemed to have been generally attended with forewarnings, which enabled the brother and sister to take necessary measures, and a friend of the Lambs has related how on one occasion he met the brother and sister, at such a season, walking hand in hand across the fields to the old asylum, both bathed in tears.''

XXll

INTRODUCTION

During this period Lamb published his first poetry — four sonnets in Coleridge 's volume, ' ' Poems on Various Subjects/' in 1796, and, somewhat earlier, a sonnet on Mrs. Siddons, the tragic actress, published in the Morning Chronicle, During a lucid interval at Hoxton he wrote the beautiful sonnet to Mary Lamb, full of admiration and brotherly affection. He was longing with all the intensity of young genius to make his way in authorship, but disappointment awaited him.

IV. Period of East India Clerkship (1796-1825).— Four years before, in 1792, Lamb had obtained his appointment in the East India House. The position paid about $300 in our money at the beginning, the salary

The East India House.

gradually increasing to about $3,500. He now, in 1796, after the periods of absence caused by his own insanity and the family tragedy, addressed himself to his labors as the sole, and altogether insufficient, support of his sister and himself. He became the '' notched and cropt scrivener,'' bound to the detested desk during the day, and hurrying home at night for a revel with his ' ' folios, his midnight darlings."

INTEODUCTION xxiii

For Lamb early became an inveterate reader, and especially a reader of old books — the neglected plays of the pre-Elizabethans and the contemporaries of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, the works of Sir Thomas Browne, Fuller, and others. And as he read he wrote, first more poems with Coleridge, and, in 1798, a little romance, ^* A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret." The tale is intensely personal in many of its qualities, a brother and a sister in the story exhibiting relationships very like his and Mary's. In this same year Lamb wrote his most famous poem, " The Old Familiar Faces.''

In the meantime Charles and Mary were living their life together, into which came some pleasure and much pain. The pleasures came in various ways, not always without alloy. In 1800, while living at Pentonville, Lamb had seen Hester Savary, a young Quakeress, come and go. He never spoke to her in his life, but she stirred his heart as no one save Ann Simmons had ever stirred it. One day Lamb missed her in his accustomed walks: she was dead. Then followed his lovely lyric, beginning,

" When maidens such as Hester die Their place ye may not well supply, Though ye among a thousand try With vain endeavor."

Then there were visits to Coleridge, in which Lamb took great delight; and pleasure came, too, in a growing acquaintance, largely due to Coleridge, with men of literature, famous .or destined to become so : Godwin, Leigh Hunt, Wordsworth, Southey, and later, Keats, Haydon, De Quincey, and Hazlitt. Delightful to guests xxiv INTKODUCTION

and hosts alike were Charles's and Mary's Wednesday evening parties, which began in 1806. To these came the most famous literary men of England as to a salon, to eat cold roast beef and potatoes, play whist, and talk of literature as only those men could talk.

The painful experiences of these days were largely the result of Mary's recurrent attacks, and of the inconveniences attending them. To quote Lamb's own words, they two '^ in their life of dual loneliness " became *^ shunned and marked." This ^^ murderess," who had to be led off to the asylum periodically, and this brother, himself once an inmate, were not very desirable tenants. In 1800 they were forced to change their lodgings twice, finally removing to 16 Mitre Court Buildings, in the Temple, where they were glad to be again amid old scenes. Poverty, too, brought them much worry. But worse than the poverty were the fits of depression from which they both suffered. Mary Lamb wrote to a friend : ' ' When I am pretty well his low spirits throw me back again ; and when he begins to get a little cheerful, then I do the same kind office for him. ' '

Wedded to these afflictions were Lamb's constant disappointments at failing to gain recognition through year after year of literary activity. Little return in money and none in reputation came as the result of his evenings of patient toil. The disappointments were repeated and bitter. ^Jn no less than four fields of literary enterprise were Lamb's ambitions blighted. '^ Rosamund Gray " had brought him little or no recognition as a writer of fiction. From 1800 to 1803 he tried journalism, writing squibs '^ at sixpence a joke " for the Post^ the Chronicle^ and the Albion, and failing alike of fame and fortune in the attempt. In 1802 he tried dramatic authorship, and wrote '^ John AVoodvil," a five-act drama in blank verse.

xxvi INTEODUCTION

He managed to find a publisher, but no manager would produce the crude first effort. In 1806 his second effort, '^ Mr. H./^ a farce, was hissed off the boards at Drury Lane Theater, Lamb himself, so it is said, joining from his box in the general evidence of public disfavor. The disappointment was intense; the loss of the needed funds was even worse. And yet again he failed, for his poetry was little read and not at all appreciated, the earlier work with Coleridge and the '^ Ballads '' of 1802 bringing their author nothing of public recognition and no funds.

But it was not all failure. In 1807 the brother and sister published jointly the now famous '' Tales from Shakespeare. ' ' The book went into a second edition the following year, and brought Charles a commission to write tales from the ^^ Odyssey '' for children. The book was published in 1808 as ' ' The Adventures of Ulysses. ' ' While doing these pieces of hack work for money, he had been at work on a task more congenial. This same year, 1808, appeared his volume, ^' Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare." In this he had collated typical scenes from the plays of the now famous but then unknown contemporaries of Shakespeare, to each selection appending a critical note of his own writing. Upon this volume and upon his critique on ' ' The Genius and Character of Hogarth " (1811) rests Lamb's fame as a critic.

The story of the next few years is soon told : days of drudgery at his desk, evenings of reading and writing at home, or of social relaxation (too often '' smoky and drinky," as Mary said) with friends abroad, or an evening at the theater with Mary. The Wednesday night parties were now famous. Much company came and went. Several times the brother and sister moved; in

INTKODUCTION xxvii

1809 to Chancery Lane/ and thence the same year to No. 4 Inner Temple Lane; in 1817 to Great Russell Street, and in 1823 to Colebrook Row, Islington. During all this time Mary Lamb, still a victim of her periodical mania, would be absent for weeks at a time, and the brother would be left desolate.

The year 1818 was marked by the first collected edition of Lamb ^s works, published, in two volumes, by the Messrs. Oilier. Two years later (1820) occurs a date of even more importance. In August of that year he made his first contribution to the new London Magazine under the guise of " Elia,'' the essay being the first in this volume, entitled " The South-Sea House.'' Essays appeared in nearly every succeeding number, and ** Elia '' began speedily to reap the reward of fame that had long been denied Lamb in his own name. These essays were gathered together and published in 1823.

The year of publication of the ' ' Essays of Elia ' ' was marred by Lamb's unfortunate controversy with Southey.^ About this time, also, the Lambs adopted a young girl, Emma Isola, whom they met at the home of a friend in Cambridge. She was the daughter of an Italian refugee, who had settled in Cambridge as a teacher of languages. Charles and Mary were ' ' Uncle ' ' and ' ' Aunt ' ' to her, and she made her home with them until she married Mr. Moxon, the publisher, in 1833. Emma Isola was increasingly a source of comfort to Charles as Mary's absences became more frequent and protracted.

1 For these locations see map on page xxv.

2 See note prefacing essay, " Witches and Other Night Fears," page 269. For a fuU account of the controversy, see Ainger's " Life," Chapter VII.

xxviii INTKODUCTION

V. "The Superannuated Man" (1825-1834).— Lamb

had grown desperately tired of office confinement. Letters to his friends exhibit a weariness almost tantamount to illness. To Wordsworth he wrote, in 1822 : * ' I grow ominously tired of official confinement. Thirty years have I served the Philistines, and my neck is not subdued to the yoke. ... I sit like Philomel all day (but not singing)^ with my heart against this thorn of a desk.''

That he should be permitted to retire from active service on a pension was more than he dared to hope. ^ ^ that I were kicked out of Leadenhall - with every mark of indignity, and a competence in my fob ! " he cried in a letter to Barton. Finally, in March of 1825, he let the directors know that he would be glad to be relieved of his duties. After weeks of impatient waiting, he was called into the Directors' Parlor, w^as formally pensioned off on two thirds his salary, left the Leadenhall Street offices, and '' went home — forever."^

Charles Lamb w^as now free to devote himself wholly to writing. It is not strange, how^ever, that we have from him in these last years no more and no better work than he had previously done. * ' When deliverance from the necessity of toil came," says Ainger, '' he could not altogether resist the baneful effects of ' unchartered freedom' and ' the weight of chance desires.' And we may be sure we should not have had more, but fewer ' Essays of Elia,' if the daily routine of different labor had been less severe or regular."

1 Philomel, daughter of the king of Athens, was changed into a nightingale. This bird is said to sing with a thorn in her breast to make her song the sweeter.

2 Leadenhall, the street in London in which the East India House is situated.

3 See " The Superannuated Man/' page 231.

INTRODUCTION xxix

Lamb wrote for the London until it suspended publication in' 1826. He contributed '' Popular Fallacies '' to the New Monthly Magaziyie, and did some compilation for Hone. With the completion of the last essays of '' Elia, " published in book form in 1833, his work was practically done. In 1827 he had removed to Enfield; in 1833 he went into lodgings at Edmonton.