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Page 130.  A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE METROPOLIS.

London Magazine, June, 1822.

The origin of this essay was the activity at that time of the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity, founded in 1818, of which a Mr. W.H.  Bodkin was the Hon. Secretary.  The Society’s motto was “Benefacta male collocata, malefacta existima;” and it attempted much the same work now performed by the Charity Organisation Society.  Perhaps the delight expressed in its annual reports in the exposure of impostors was a shade too hearty—­at any rate one can see therein cause sufficient for Lamb’s counter-blast.  Lamb was not the only critic of Mr. Bodkin’s zeal.  Hood, in the Odes and Addresses, published in 1825, included a remonstrance to Mr. Bodkin.

The Society’s activity led to a special commission of the House of Commons in 1821 to inquire into the laws relating to vagrants, concerning which Lamb speaks, the clergyman alluded to being Dr. Henry Butts Owen, of Highgate.  The result of the commission was an additional stringency, brought about by Mr. George Chetwynd’s bill.

It was this essay, says Hood, which led to his acquaintance with Charles Lamb.  After its appearance in the London Magazine, of which Hood was then sub-editor, he wrote Lamb a letter on coarse paper purporting to come from a grateful beggar; Lamb did not admit the discovery of the perpetrator of the joke, but soon afterwards Lamb called on Hood when he was ill, and a friendship followed to which we owe Hood’s charming recollections of Lamb—­among the best that were written of him by any one.

Page 131, line 14. The Blind Beggar.  The reference is to the ballad of “The Beggar’s Daughter of Bednall Green.”  The version in the Percy Reliques relates the adventures of Henry, Earl of Leicester, the son of Simon de Montfort, who was blinded at the battle of Evesham and left for dead, and thereafter begged his way with his pretty Bessee.  In the London Magazine Lamb had written “Earl of Flanders,” which he altered to “Earl of Cornwall” in Elia.  The ballad says Earl of Leicester.

Page 131, line 28. Dear Margaret Newcastle.  One of Lamb’s recurring themes of praise (see “The Two Races of Men,” “Mackery End in Hertfordshire,” and “Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading").  “Romancical,” according to the New English Dictionary, is Lamb’s own word.  This is the only reference given for it.

Page 133, line 7. Spital sermons.  On Monday of Easter week it was the custom for the Christ’s Hospital boys to walk in procession to the Royal Exchange, and on Tuesday to the Mansion House; on each occasion returning with the Lord Mayor to hear a special sermon—­a spital sermon, as it was called—­and an anthem.  The sermon is now preached only on Easter Tuesday.

Page 133, line 24. Overseers of St. L——­.  Lamb’s Key states that both the overseers and the mild rector were inventions.  In the London Magazine the rector’s parish is “P——.”