Page 14, line 8. The Tower. Blue-coat boys still have this right of free entrance to the Tower; but the lions are no more. They were transferred to the Zoological Gardens in 1831. Page 14, line 10. L.'s governor. Meaning Samuel Salt, M.P. (see note on page 365); but it was actually his friend Mr. Timothy Yeats who signed Lamb's paper. More accurately, Lamb's father lived under Salt's roof. Page 14, line 20. Callow overseer. In the London Magazine the word was printed "callous." H Page 14, line 29. According to Lamb's Key this was Hodges; but in the British Museum copy of Elia, first edition, some one has written Huggins. It is immaterial. Nevis and St. Kitt's (St. Christopher's) are islands in the British West Indies. Tobin would be James Webbe Tobin, of Nevis, who died in 1814, the brother of the playwright John Tobin, author of "The Honeymoon." Page 14, line 37. A young ass. The general opinion at Christ's Hospital is that Lamb invented this incident; and yet it has the air of being true. Page 14, line 42. Caligula's minion. The Emperor Caligula raised a horse to the post of chief consul. Page 14, line 44. Page 15, line 6. Waxing fat. Like Jeshurun (Deut. xxxii. 15). Jericho. See Joshua vi. L.'s admired Perry. John Perry, steward from 1761 to 1785, mentioned in Lamb's earlier essay. Page 15, line 13. Verrio. Rowlandson and Pugin's drawing of Verrio's great picture is reproduced in Vol. I., opposite page 438. Page 15, line 18. Harpies. Lamb makes the same allusion (to the Eneid, III., 247-257) in "Grace before Meat," page 93, again close to a reference to Jeshurun waxing fat. Page 15, line 18. In the hall of Dido. See the Eneid, I., where Eneas studies the pictures in the temple which Dido was raising to Juno and is comforted by them: "Animum pictura pascit inani "he feeds his soul on the 'bodiless presentment' -line 464. Page 15, line 21. Gags. Still current slang. Page 15, line 26. No name in the Key. The quotation is It is reported thou didst eat strange flesh "Antony and Cleopatra," Act I., Scene 4, lines 67-68. It is perhaps worth remarking that in David Copperfield Dickens has a school incident of a similar character. Page 15, line 39. Page 16, line 13. from 1790 to 1813. The accursed thing. See Joshua vii. 13. Mr. Hathaway. Matthias 'Hathaway, steward Page 16, line 32. I was a hypochondriac lad. Here Lamb drops the Coleridge mask and speaks as himself. The footnote to this paragraph refers to John Howard, the philanthropist, for whom Lamb seems to have had only dislike (see the reference to his features NOTES in the essay on "The Old Benchers," page 88). 6 319 In the London Magazine it ended, "Methinks I could willingly spit upon his stony An execution of Watchet-blue. Him whom Seine's blue nymphs deplore Page 17, line 16. Cantos 28 to 30. Collins' "Ode to the Manners." Disfigurements in Dante. See The Inferno, Ultima Supplicia. "Extreme penalties." Bamber Page 17, line 25. Bamber Gascoigne, and Peter Aubert. Page 17, line 27. Gascoigne, M.P. (1725-1791), of Bifrons, in Essex. Of Peter Aubert I can find nothing, except that the assistant secretary of the East India Company at the time Lamb wrote this essay was Peter Auber, afterwards full secretary. His name here may be a joke. Page 17, line 36. at an auto da fé. Page 18, line 8. vicar of Ugley and below. Page 18, line 18. San Benito. Matthew Field. curate of Berden. The yellow robe worn by victims "Like a dancer." In "Antony and Cleopatra," Act III., Scene 11, lines 35-36, of Octavius :— he at Philippi, kept His sword e'en like a dancer. Lamb was fond of this phrase. Mrs. Battle, he said, "held not her good sword (her cards) "like a dancer.' his elegy on Shakespeare. Page 18, line 28. Wilkins, by Robert Paltock, 1751, is still read; but The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle, 1726, has had its day. It was a blend of unconvincing travel and some rather free narrative: a piece See Lamb's sonnet to of sheer hackwork to meet a certain market. Stothard, Vol. V., page 75. The Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy I have not seen. Canon Ainger describes it as a rather foolish romance, showing how a Blue-coat boy marries a rich lady of rank. The sub-title is "Memoirs of the Life and Happy Adventures of Mr. Benjamin Templeman; formerly a Scholar in Christ's Hospital. By an Orphanotropian," 1770. Page 18, line 34. "French and English." Boys still play "French and English." A piece of paper is covered with dots, and the players -one French and one English-in turn close their eyes and slash a pencil across it. The dots through which the line has passed are counted after each stroke, and that nation wins whose pencil annihilates most. Page 18, line 37. Rousseau and Locke, whose systems of education agreed in the desirability of combining the practical with the theoretical (see Rousseau's Emilia, 1762, and Locke's Thoughts Concerning the Education of Children, 1693). Page 19, line 8. Helots Helots... Spartans. Referring to the practice of Spartan parents of exhibiting to their sons, as a warning, a drunken Helot or slave. Page 19, line 13. The Samite. his pupils to speak until they had lectures. Pythagoras of Samos, who forbade listened through five years of his Page 19, line 14. Our little Goshen. See Exodus viii. 22. Lamb was fond of this allusion. Page 19, line 17. Gideon's miracle. See Judges vi. 37, 38; but in verses 39 and 40 the converse happened. Lamb here remembers Cowley's lines in "The Complaint," Stanza 7 : For ev'ry tree, and ev'ry land around, With pearly dew was crown'd, And upon all the quicken'd ground The fruitful seed of Heav'n did brooding lie, And nothing but the Muse's fleece was dry. Page 19, line 24. "Playing holiday." If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as weary as to work. Page 19, line 27. "1. Henry IV.," Act I., Scene 2, lines 227-228. The Ululantes. "The howling sufferers." are clearly heard groanings and the sound of (Eneid, VI., 557). Easter anthems. Scrannel pipes. These were written also some "Grate on their scrannel pipes "Hence [Tartarus] the cruel scourge Page 19, line 29. times by the boys. Page 19, line 30. (Milton's Lycidas, 124). Page 19, line 31. Flaccus's quibble. In the Satires, Book I., VII., 34-5, where Rex has the double meaning of King, a private surname, and king, a monarch. The thin jests in Terence are in "Andrea,' Act V., Scene 2-tristis severitas in vultu-"puritanic rigour in his countenance," says one of the comic characters of a palpable liar; and in the "Adelphi," Act III., Scene 3, where, after a father has counselled his son to look into the lives of men as in a mirror, the slave counsels the scullions to look into stew-pans as in a mirror. Page 19. Footnote. I have not discovered a copy of Matthew Feilde's play. Rabidus furor. "Rabid rage." From Catullus Page 20, line 14. probably-Attis, 38. Page 20, line 22. Squinting W - Not identifiable. Page 20, line 31. Coleridge, in his literary life. Coleridge speaks in the Biographia Literaria of having had the "inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though at the same time a very severe master, the Reverend James Bowyer [Boyer]," and goes on to attribute to that |