The fruitful fields of pleasant Hertfordshire—­

which one can easily understand would have lingered in Lamb’s mind very graciously.

In the London Magazine the essay ended with the words, “Till then, Farewell.”

* * * * *

Page 86.  MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE.

London Magazine, July, 1821.  Reprinted in Elia, 1823, as written, save for the omission of italics from many passages.

Bridget Elia, who is met also in “Mrs. Battle,” in “My Relations,” and in “Old China,” was, of course, Mary Lamb.

Page 86, line 11 from foot. She must have a story.  Thomas Westwood, in his reminiscences of the Lambs in later years, printed in Notes and Queries, speaks of Mary Lamb’s passion for novel-reading in the Enfield days, when he was a boy.

Page 87, line 6. Margaret Newcastle.  Lamb’s devotion to this lady is expressed again in the essay on “The Two Races of Men,” in the essay on Beggars, and in “Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading.”

Page 87, line 8. Free-thinkers ...  William Godwin, perhaps alone among Lamb’s friends, quite answers to the description of leader of novel philosophies and systems; but there had been also Thomas Holcroft and John Thelwall among the Lambs’ acquaintance.  And Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt would come within this description.

Page 87, foot. Good old English reading.  The reference is to Samuel Salt’s library in the Temple (see note to “The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple").

Page 88, line 14. Mackery End.  The farmhouse still stands, although new front rooms have been added.  At the end of the present hall, one passes through what was in Lamb’s time the front door, and thereafter the house is exactly as it used to be save that its south windows have been filled in.  By kind invitation of Mr. Dolphin Smith, the farmer, who had been there over forty years, I spent in 1902 some time in the same parlour in which the Lambs had been entertained.  Harpenden, on the north-west, has grown immensely since Lamb’s day, and the houses at the Folly, between Wheathampstead and the Cherry Trees, are new; but Mackery End, or Mackrye End as the farmer’s waggons have it, remains unencroached upon.  Near by is the fine old mansion which is Mackery End house proper; Lamb’s Mackery End was the farm.

Lamb’s first visit there must have been when he was a very little boy—­somewhere about 1780.  Probably we may see recollections of it in Mary Lamb’s story “The Farmhouse” in Mrs. Leicester’s School (see Vol.  III. of this edition).

Page 88, line 18. A great-aunt.  Mary Field, Lamb’s grandmother, was Mary Bruton, whose sister married, as he says, a Gladman, and was the great-aunt mentioned.  The present occupier of the farm is neither Gladman nor Bruton; but both names are still to be found in the county.  A Miss Sarah Bruton, a direct descendant of Lamb’s great-aunt, was living at Wheathampstead in 1902.  She had on her walls two charming oval portraits of ancestresses, possibly—­for she was uncertain as to their identity—­two of the handsome sisters whom Lamb extols.