Manning, by the way, contributed articles on Chinese jests to the New Monthly Magazine in 1826.

A preliminary sketch of the second portion of this essay will be found in the letter to Coleridge dated March 9, 1822.  See also the letters to Mr. and Mrs. Bruton, January 6, 1823, to Mrs. Collier, November 2, 1824, and to H. Dodwell, October 7, 1827, all in acknowledgment of pigs sent to Lamb probably from an impulse found in this essay.

Later, Lamb abandoned the extreme position here taken.  In the little essay entitled “Thoughts on Presents of Game,” 1833 (see Vol.  I.), he says:  “Time was, when Elia ... preferred to all a roasted pig.  But he disclaims all such green-sickness appetites in future.”

Page 141, verse.  “Ere sin could blight ...”  From Coleridge’s “Epitaph on an Infant.”

Page 142, line 7 from foot. My good old aunt.  Probably Aunt Hetty.  See the essay on “Christ’s Hospital,” for another story of her.  The phrase, “Over London Bridge,” unless an invention, suggests that before this aunt went to live with the Lambs—­probably not until they left the Temple in 1792—­she was living on the Surrey side.  But it was possibly an Elian mystification.  Lamb had another aunt, but of her we know nothing.

Page 143, line 11 from foot. St. Omer’s.  The French Jesuit College.  Lamb, it is unnecessary to say, was never there.

* * * * *

Page 144.  A BACHELOR’S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOUR OF MARRIED PEOPLE.

This is, by many years, the earliest of these essays.  It was printed first in The Reflector, No.  IV., in 1811 or 1812.  When Lamb brought his Works together, in 1818, he omitted it.  In September, 1822, it appeared in the London Magazine as one of the reprints of Lamb’s earlier writings, of which the “Confessions of a Drunkard” (see Vol.  I.)was the first.  In that number also appeared the “Dissertation upon Roast Pig,” thereby offering the reader an opportunity of comparing Lamb’s style in 1811 with his riper and richer style of 1822.  The germ of the essay must have been long in Lamb’s mind, for we find him writing to Hazlitt in 1805 concerning Mrs. Rickman:  “A good-natured woman though, which is as much as you can expect from a friend’s wife, whom you got acquainted with as a bachelor.”

Page 147, line 6. “Love me, love my dog.”  See “Popular Fallacies,” page 302, for an expansion of this paragraph.

* * * * *

Page 150.  ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS.

In February, 1822, Lamb began a series of three articles in the London Magazine on “The Old Actors.”  The second was printed in April and the third in October of the same year.  Afterwards, in reprinting them in Elia, he rearranged them into the essays, “On Some of the Old Actors,” “On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century,” and “On the Acting of Munden,” omitting a considerable portion altogether.  The essay in its original tripart form will be found in the Appendix to this volume.