Pity the sorrows of a poor old man
    Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,
  Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span;
    Oh give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

In the reference to Wordsworth Lamb pokes fun at the statement, in his friend’s preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, that the purpose of that book was to relate or describe incidents and situations from common life as far as possible in a selection of language really used by men.

Lamb’s P.S. concerning the “Beggar’s Petition” was followed in the London Magazine by this N.B.:—­

    “N.B.  I am glad to see JANUS veering about to the old quarter.  I
    feared he had been rust-bound.

    “C. being asked why he did not like Gold’s ‘London’ as well as
    ours—­it was in poor S.’s time—­replied—­

      “_—­Because there is no WEATHERCOCK
      And that’s the reason why._”

The explanation of this note is that “Janus Weathercock”—­one of the pseudonyms of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright—­after a long absence from its pages, had sent to the previous month’s London Magazine, May, 1822, an amusing letter of criticism of that periodical, commenting on some of its regular contributors.  Therein he said:  “Clap Elia on the back for such a series of good behaviour.”—­Who C. is cannot be said; possibly Lamb, as a joke, intends Coleridge to be indicated; but poor S. would be John Scott, the first editor of the London Magazine, who was killed in a duel.  C.’s reply consisted of the last lines of Wordsworth’s “Anecdote for Fathers; or, Falsehood Corrected.”  Accurately they run:—­

  At Kelve there was no weather-cock
  And that’s the reason why.

The hero of this poem was a son of Lamb’s friend Basil Montagu.

Gold’s London Magazine was a contemporary of the better known London magazine of the same name.  In Vol.  III. appeared an article entitled “The Literary Ovation,” describing an imaginary dinner-party given by Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock & Joy in February, 1821, at which Lamb was supposed to be present and to sing a song by Webster, one of his old dramatists.  Mr. Bertram Dobell conjectures that Wainewright may have written this squib.

* * * * *

Page 137.  A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG.

London Magazine, September, 1822.

There has been some discussion as to the origin of the central idea of this essay.  A resemblance is found in a passage in The Turkish Spy, where, after describing the annual burnt-offering of a bull by the Athenians, The Spy continues:—­