Page 11, line 9 from foot. G.D. George Dyer (1755-1841), Lamb’s friend for many years.  This is the first mention of him in the essays; but we shall meet him again, particularly in “Amicus Redivivus.”  George Dyer was educated at Christ’s Hospital long before Lamb’s time there, and, becoming a Grecian, had entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge.  He became at first an usher in Essex, then a private tutor to the children of Robert Robinson, the Unitarian, whose life he afterwards excellently wrote, then an usher again, at Northampton, one of his colleagues being John Clarke, father of Lamb’s friend, Charles Cowden Clarke.  In 1792 he settled in Clifford’s Inn as a hack; wrote poems, made indexes, examined libraries for a great bibliographical work (never published), and contributed “all that was original” to Valpy’s classics in 141 volumes.  Under this work his sight gave way; and he once showed Hazlitt two fingers the use of which he had lost in copying out MSS. of Procrus and Plotinus in a fine Greek hand.  Fortunately a good woman took him under her wing; they were married in 1825; and Dyer’s last days were happy.  His best books were his Life of Robert Robinson and his History of the University and Colleges of Cambridge.  Lamb and his friends laughed at him and loved him.  In addition to the stories told by Lamb in his letters and essays, there are amusing characteristics of Dyer in Crabb Robinson’s diary, in Leigh Hunt, in Hazlitt, in Talfourd, and in other places.  All bear upon his gentleness, his untidiness and his want of humour.  One of the most famous stories tells of Dyer’s criticism of Williams, the terrible Ratcliffe Highway murderer.  Dyer, who would never say an ill word of any one, was asked his opinion of this cold-blooded assassin of two families.  “He must,” he replied after due thought, “be rather an eccentric character.”

Page 12, line 10. Injustice to him. In the London Magazine the following footnote came here, almost certainly by Lamb:—­

“Violence or injustice certainly none, Mr. Elia.  But you will acknowledge that the charming unsuspectingness of our friend has sometimes laid him open to attacks, which, though savouring (we hope) more of waggery than malice—­such is our unfeigned respect for G.D.—­might, we think, much better have been omitted.  Such was that silly joke of L[amb], who, at the time the question of the Scotch Novels was first agitated, gravely assured our friend—­who as gravely went about repeating it in all companies—­that Lord Castlereagh had acknowledged himself to be the author of Waverly! Note—­not by Elia."

Page 12, line 11. "Strike an abstract idea." I do not find this quotation—­if it be one; but when John Lamb once knocked Hazlitt down, during an argument on pigments, Hazlitt refrained from striking back, remarking that he was a metaphysician and dealt not in blows but in ideas.  Lamb may be slyly remembering this.