authors!  Of all they said or did in their lifetime, a few glittering words only!  His Essays found some favourers, as they appeared separately; they shuffled their way in the crowd well enough singly; how they will read, now they are brought together, is a question for the publishers, who have thus ventured to draw out into one piece his ’weaved-up follies.’

    “PHIL-ELIA.”

This passage calls for some remark.  Cousin Bridget was, of course, Mary Lamb.—­Lamb repeated the joke about his Works in his “Autobiography” (see Vol.  I.) and in “The Superannuated Man.”—­Some record of certain of the old clerks mentioned by Lamb still remains; but I can find nothing of the others.  Whether or not Peter Corbet really derived from the Bishop we do not know, but the facetious Bishop Corbet was Richard Corbet (1582-1635), Bishop of Oxford and Norwich, whose conviviality was famous and who wrote the “Fairies’ Farewell.”  John Hoole (1727-1803), who translated Tasso and wrote the life of Scott of Amwell and a number of other works, was principal auditor at the end of his time at the India House.  He retired about 1785, when Lamb was ten years old.  Writing to Coleridge on January 5, 1797, Lamb speaks of Hoole as “the great boast and ornament of the India House,” and says that he found Tasso, in Hoole’s translation, “more vapid than smallest small beer sun-vinegared.”  The moderniser of Walton would be Moses Browne (1704-1787), whose edition of The Complete Angler, 1750, was undertaken at the suggestion of Dr. Johnson.

* * * * *

Page 174.  BLAKESMOOR IN H——­SHIRE

London Magazine, September, 1824.

With this essay Lamb made his reappearance in the magazine, after eight months’ absence.

By Blakesmoor Lamb meant Blakesware, the manor-house near Widford, in Hertfordshire, where his grandmother, Mary Field, had been housekeeper for many years.  Compare the essay “Dream-Children.”

Blakesware, which was built by Sir Francis Leventhorpe about 1640, became the property of the Plumers in 1683, being then purchased by John Plumer, of New Windsor, who died in 1718.  It descended to William Plumer, M.P. for Yarmouth, in the Isle of Wight, and afterwards for Hertfordshire, who died in 1767, and was presumably Mrs. Field’s first employer.  His widow and the younger children remained at Blakesware until Mrs. Plumer’s death in 1778, but the eldest son, William Plumer, moved at once to Gilston, a few miles east of Blakesware, a mansion which for a long time was confused with Blakesware by commentators on Lamb.  This William Plumer, who was M.P. for Lewes, for Hertfordshire, and finally for Higham Ferrers, and a governor of Christ’s Hospital, kept up Blakesware after his mother’s death in 1778 (when Lamb was three) exactly as before, but it remained empty save for Mrs. Field and the servants under her.  Mrs. Field became thus practically mistress of it,