Page 133, line 27. Vincent Bourne.  See Lamb’s essay on Vincent Bourne, Vol.  I. This poem was translated by Lamb himself, and was first published in The Indicator for May 3, 1820.  See Vol.  IV. for Lamb’s other translations from Bourne.

Page 135, line 2. A well-known figure.  This beggar I take to be Samuel Horsey.  He is stated to have been known as the King of the Beggars, and a very prominent figure in London.  His mutilation is ascribed to the falling of a piece of timber in Bow Lane, Cheapside, some nineteen years before; but it may have been, as Lamb says, in the Gordon Riots of 1780.

There is the figure of Horsey on his little carriage, with several other of the more notable beggars of the day plying their calling, in an etching of old houses at the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, made by J.T.  Smith in 1789 for his Ancient Topography of London, 1815.  I give it in my large edition.

Page 137, end of essay. Feigned or not. In the London Magazine the essay did not end here.  It continued thus:—­

“‘Pray God your honour relieve me,’ said a poor beadswoman to my friend L——­ one day; ‘I have seen better days.’  ’So have I, my good woman,’ retorted he, looking up at the welkin which was just then threatening a storm—­and the jest (he will have it) was as good to the beggar as a tester.

    “It was at all events kinder than consigning her to the stocks, or
    the parish beadle—­

    “But L. has a way of viewing things in rather a paradoxical light
    on some occasions.

    “ELIA.

“P.S.—­My friend Hume (not MP.) has a curious manuscript in his possession, the original draught of the celebrated ’Beggar’s Petition’ (who cannot say by heart the ‘Beggar’s Petition?’) as it was written by some school usher (as I remember) with corrections interlined from the pen of Oliver Goldsmith.  As a specimen of the doctor’s improvement, I recollect one most judicious alteration—­

      “A pamper’d menial drove me from the door.

    “It stood originally—­

      “A livery servant drove me, &c.

    “Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language properly
    substituted for the phrase of common conversation; against
    Wordsworth.

    “I think I must get H. to send it to the LONDON, as a corollary to
    the foregoing.”

The foregoing passage needs some commentary.  Lamb’s friend L——­ was Lamb himself.  He tells the story to Manning in the letter of January 2,1810.—­Lamb’s friend Hume was Joseph Hume of the victualling office, Somerset House, to whom letters from Lamb will be found in Mr. W.C.  Hazlitt’s Lamb and Hazlitt, 1900.  Hume translated The Inferno of Dante into blank verse, 1812.—­The “Beggar’s Petition,” a stock piece for infant recitation a hundred years ago, was a poem beginning thus:—­