Page 127, line 12 from foot. The young Montagu.  Edward Wortley Montagu (1713-1776), the traveller, ran away from Westminster School more than once, becoming, among other things, a chimney-sweeper.

Page 127, line 9 from foot. Arundel Castle.  The Sussex seat of the Dukes of Norfolk.  The “late duke” was Charles Howard, eleventh duke, who died in 1815, and who spent enormous sums of money on curiosities.  I can find no record of the story of the sweep.  Perhaps Lamb invented it, or applied it to Arundel.

Page 128, line 14 from foot. Jem White.  James White (1775-1820), who was at Christ’s Hospital with Lamb, and who wrote Falstaff’s Letters, 1796, in his company (see Vol.  I.).  “There never was his like,” Lamb told another old schoolfellow, Valentine Le Grice, in 1833; “we shall never see such days as those in which he flourished.”  See the essay “On Some of the Old Actors,” for an anecdote of White.

Page 128, line 8 from foot. The fair of St. Bartholomew.  Held on September 3 at Smithfield, until 1855.  George Daniel, in his recollections of Lamb, records a visit they paid together to the Fair.  Lamb took Wordsworth through its noisy mazes in 1802.

Page 129, line 14. Bigod.  John Fenwick (see note to “The Two Races of Men").

Leigh Hunt, in The Examiner for May 5, 1822, quoted some of the best sentences of this essay.  On May 12 a correspondent (L.E.) wrote a very agreeable letter supporting Lamb’s plea for generosity to sweeps and remarking thus upon Lamb himself:—­

I read the modicum on “Chimney-Sweepers,” which your last paper contained, with pleasure.  It appears to be the production of that sort of mind which you justly denominate “gifted;” but which is greatly undervalued by the majority of men, because they have no sympathies in common with it.  Many who might partially appreciate such a spirit, do nevertheless object to it, from the snap-dragon nature of its coruscations, which shine themselves, but shew every thing around them to disadvantage.  Your deep philosophers also, and all the laborious professors of the art of sinking, may elevate their nasal projections, and demand “cui bono”?  For my part I prefer a little enjoyment to a great deal of philosophy.  It is these gifted minds that enliven our habitations, and contribute so largely to those every-day delights, which constitute, after all, the chief part of mortal happiness.  Such minds are ever active—­their light, like the vestal lamp, is ever burning—­and in my opinion the man who refines the common intercourse of life, and wreaths the altars of our household gods with flowers, is more deserving of respect and gratitude than all the sages who waste their lives in elaborate speculations, which tend to nothing, and which we cannot comprehend—­nor they neither.

On June 2, however, “J.C.H.” intervened to correct what he considered the “dangerous spirit” of Lamb’s essay, which said so little of the hardships of the sweeps, but rather suggested that they were a happy class.  J.C.H. then put the case of the unhappy sweep with some eloquence, urging upon all householders the claims of the mechanical sweeping machine.