almost forgot her fears.  I read on.  ’He ought to have his book knocked out of his hand,’ exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention.  Still I read on—­and, till the time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved, as Saint Antony at his Holy Offices, with the satyrs, apes, and hobgoblins, mopping, and making mouths at him, in the picture, while the good man sits undisturbed at the sight, as if he were sole tenant of the desart.—­The individual rabble (I recognised more than one of their ugly faces) had damned a slight piece of mine but a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits should not a second time put me out of countenance.”

Master Betty was William Henry West Betty (1791-1874), known as the “Young Roscius,” whose Hamlet and Douglas sent playgoers wild in 1804-5-6.  Pitt, indeed, once adjourned the House in order that his Hamlet might be witnessed.  His most cried-up scenes in “Hamlet” were the “To be or not to be” soliloquy, and the fencing scene before the king and his mother.  The piece of Lamb’s own which had been hissed was, of course, “Mr. H.,” produced on December 10, 1806; but very likely he added this reference as a symmetrical afterthought, for he would probably have visited Master Betty much earlier in his career, that phenomenon’s first appearance at Covent Garden being two years before the advent of the ill-fated Hogsflesh.

Page 200, line 22. Martin B——­.  Martin Charles Burney, son of Admiral Burney, and a lifelong friend of the Lambs—­to whom Lamb dedicated the prose part of his Works in 1818 (see Vol.  IV.).

Page 200, line 28. A quaint poetess.  Mary Lamb.  The poem is in Poetry for Children, 1809 (see Vol.  III. of this edition).  In line 17 the word “then” has been inserted by Lamb.  The punctuation also differs from that of the Poetry for Children.

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Page 201.  THE OLD MARGATE HOY.

London Magazine, July, 1823.  This, like others of Lamb’s essays, was translated into French and published in the Revue Britannique in 1833.  It was prefaced by the remark:  “L’auteur de cette delicieuse esquisse est Charles Lamb, connu sous le nom d’Eliah.”

Page 201, beginning. I have said so before. See “Oxford in the Vacation.”

Page 201, line 5 of essay. My beloved Thames. Lamb describes a riparian holiday at and about Richmond in a letter to Robert Lloyd in 1804.

Page 201, line 8 of essay. Worthing...  There is no record of the Lambs’ sojourn at Worthing or Eastbourne.  They were at Brighton in 1817, and Mary Lamb at any rate enjoyed walking on the Downs there; in a letter to Miss Wordsworth of November 21, 1817, she described them as little mountains, almost as good as Westmoreland scenery.  They were at Hastings—­at 13 Standgate Street—­in