The evidence that the Charles Lamb who conveyed the property in 1815 is Elia himself is overwhelming.

1.  The essay itself gives the locality correctly:  it is about two and a half miles from Puckeridge.

2.  The plot of land contains as near as possible three-quarters of an acre, with an old thatched cottage and small barn standing upon it.  The barn, specially mentioned in all the deeds, is a most unusual adjunct of so small a cottage.  The property, the deeds of which go back to 1708, appears to have been isolated and held by small men, and consists of a long narrow tongue of land jutting into the property now of the Savile family (Earls of Mexborough), but formerly of the Earls of Hardwicke.

3.  The witness to Charles Lamb’s signature on the deed of 1815 is William Hazlitt, of 19, York Street, Westminster.

4.  Lamb was living in Inner Temple Lane in 1815, and did not leave the Temple till 1817.

5.  The essay was printed in the London Magazine for December, 1821, six years after “the estate has passed into more prudent hands.”

6.  And lastly, the following letter in Charles Lamb’s own handwriting, found with the deeds which are in my possession, clinches the matter:—­

“MR. SARGUS,—­This is to give you notice that I have parted with the Cottage to Mr. Grig Junr. to whom you will pay rent from Michaelmas last.  The rent that was due at Michaelmas I do not wish you to pay me.  I forgive it you as you may have been at some expences in repairs.

    “Yours

    “CH.  LAMB.

    “Inner Temple Lane, London,

    “23 Feb., 1815.”

It is certainly not the fact that Lamb acquired the property, as he states, by the will of his godfather, for it was conveyed to him some three years after the latter’s death by Mrs. Fielde.  But strict accuracy of fact in Lamb’s ‘Essays’ we neither look for nor desire.  In all probability Mrs. Fielde conveyed him the property in accordance with an expressed wish of her husband in his lifetime.  Reading also between the lines of the essay, it is interesting to notice that Francis Fielde, the Holborn oilman of 1779, in 1809 has become Francis Fielde, Esq., of New Cavendish Street.  In the letter quoted above Lamb speaks of his purchaser as “Mr. Grig Junr.,” more, I am inclined to think, from his desire to have his little joke than from mere inaccuracy, for he must have known the correct name of his purchaser.  But Mr. Greg, Jun., was only just twenty-one when he bought the property, and the expression “as merry as a grig” running in Lamb’s mind might have proved irresistible to him.  Lastly, the property is now called, and has been so far back as I can trace, “Button Snap.”  No such name is found in any of the title-deeds, and it was impossible before to understand whence it arose.  Now it is not:  Lamb must have so christened his little property in jest, and the name has stuck.