book, good thoughts in good language, William Penn’s ’No Cross, No Crown,’ I like it immensely.  Unluckily I went to one of his meetings, tell him, in St. John Street [Clerkenwell] yesterday, and saw a man under all the agitations and workings of a fanatic, who believed himself under the influence of some ‘inevitable presence.’  This cured me of Quakerism; I love it in the books of Penn and Woolman, but I detest the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit....”

Both Forster and Hood tell us that Lamb in outward appearance resembled a Quaker.

Page 52, line 13. The uncommunicating muteness of fishes.  Lamb had in mind this thought on the silence of fishes when he was at work on John Woodvil.  Simon remarks, in the exquisite passage (Vol.  IV.) in reply to the question, “What is it you love?”

       The fish in th’ other element
  That knows no touch of eloquence.

Page 53, second quotation. “How reverend ...” An adaptation of Congreve’s description of York Minster in “The Mourning Bride” (Mary Lamb’s “first play"), Act I., Scene 1:—­

  How reverend is the face of this tall pile ... 
  Looking tranquillity!

Page 53, middle. Fox and Dewesbury.  George Fox (1624-1691) founded the Society of Friends.  William Dewesbury was one of Fox’s first colleagues, and a famous preacher.  William Penn (1644-1718), the founder of Pennsylvania, was the most illustrious of the early converts to Quakerism.  Lamb refers to him again, before his judges, in the essay on “Imperfect Sympathies,” page 73.  George Fox’s Journal was lent to Lamb by a friend of Bernard Barton’s in 1823.  On returning it, Lamb remarked (February 17, 1823):—­“I have quoted G.F. in my ‘Quaker’s Meeting’ as having said he was ‘lifted up in spirit’ (which I felt at the time to be not a Quaker phrase),’ and the Judge and Jury were as dead men under his feet.’  I find no such words in his Journal, and I did not get them from Sewell, and the latter sentence I am sure I did not mean to invent.  I must have put some other Quaker’s words into his mouth.”

Sewel was a Dutchman—­William Sewel (1654-1720).  His title runs:  History of the Rise, Increase and Progress of the Christian People called Quakers, written originally in Low Dutch by W. Sewel, and by himself translated into English, 1722.  James Naylor (1617-1660) was one of the early Quaker martyrs—­“my favourite” Lamb calls him in a letter.  John Woolman (1720-1772) was an American Friend.  His principal writings are to be found in A Journal of the Life, Gospel Labours, and Christian Experiences of that faithful minister of Jesus Christ, John Woolman, late of Mount Holly in the Province of Jersey, North America, 1795.  Modern editions are obtainable.

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Page 56.  THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER.

London Magazine, May, 1821.

Page 56, line 9. Ortelius ...  Arrowsmith.  Abraham Ortellius (1527-1598), the Dutch geographer and the author of Theatrum Orbis Terrae, 1570.  Aaron Arrowsmith (1750-1823) was a well-known cartographer at the beginning of the nineteenth century.  Lamb would perhaps have known something of his Atlas of Southern India, a very useful work at the East India House.