And again, to Bernard Barton, in August, 1827:—­“You have well described your old-fashioned grand paternall Hall.  Is it not odd that every one’s earliest recollections are of some such place.  I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the ’London’).  Nothing fills a child’s mind like a large old Mansion ... better if un- or partially-occupied; peopled with the spirits of deceased members of the County and Justices of the Quorum.  Would I were buried in the peopled solitude of one, with my feelings at 7 years old!

“Those marble busts of the Emperors, they seem’d as if they were to stand for ever, as they had stood from the living days of Rome, in that old Marble Hall, and I to partake of their permanency; Eternity was, while I thought not of Time.  But he thought of me, and they are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old Dwelling and its princely gardens.  I feel like a grasshopper that chirping about the grounds escaped his scythe only by my littleness.  Ev’n now he is whetting one of his smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps.  Well!”

Writing to Barton in August, 1824, concerning the present essay, Lamb describes it as a “futile effort ... ’wrung from me with slow pain’.”

Page 175, line 15 from foot. Mrs. Battle.  There was a haunted room at Blakesware, but the suggestion that the famous Mrs. Battle died in it was probably due to a sudden whimsical impulse.  Lamb states in “Dream-Children” that Mrs. Field occupied this room.

Page 177, line 22. The hills of Lincoln.  See Lamb’s sonnet “On the Family Name,” Vol.  IV.  Lamb’s father came from Lincoln.

Page 177, line 11 from foot. Those old W——­s.  Lamb thus disguised the name of Plumer.  He could not have meant Wards, for Robert Ward did not marry William Plumer’s widow till four years after this essay was printed.

Page 178, line 2. My Alice.  See notes to “Dream-Children.”

Page 178, line 2. Mildred Elia, I take it.  Alter these words, in the London Magazine, came this passage:—­

“From her, and from my passion for her—­for I first learned love from a picture—­Bridget took the hint of those pretty whimsical lines, which thou mayst see, if haply thou hast never seen them, Reader, in the margin.[1] But my Mildred grew not old, like the imaginery Helen.”

This ballad, written in gentle ridicule of Lamb’s affection for the Blakesware portrait, and Mary Lamb’s first known poem, was printed in the John Woodvil volume, 1802, and in the Works, 1818.

[Footnote 1: 
  “High-born Helen, round your dwelling,
    These twenty years I’ve paced in vain: 
  Haughty beauty, thy lover’s duty
    Hath been to glory in his pain.

  “High-born Helen, proudly telling
    Stories of thy cold disdain;
  I starve, I die, now you comply,
    And I no longer can complain.

  “These twenty years I’ve lived on tears,
    Dwelling for ever on a frown;
  On sighs I’ve fed, your scorn my bread;
    I perish now you kind are grown.