Lamb’s reference to Southey and to Andre’s monument is characteristically mischievous.  He is reminding Southey of his early sympathy with rebels—­his “Wat Tyler” and pantisocratic days.  Major John Andre, Sir Henry Clinton’s adjutant-general, was caught returning from an interview with an American traitor—­a perfectly honourable proceeding in warfare—­and was hanged by Washington as a spy in 1780.  No blame attached either to judge or victim.  Andre’s remains were reburied in the Abbey in 1821.  Lamb speaks of injury to Andre’s figure in the monument, but the usual thing was for the figure of Washington to be attacked.  Its head has had to be renewed more than once.  Minor thefts have also been committed.  According to Mrs. Gordon’s Life of Dean Buckland, one piece of vandalism at any rate was the work of an American, who returned to the dean two heads which he had appropriated as relics.

In The Examiner for April 8, 1821, is quoted from The Traveller the following epigram, which may not improbably be Lamb’s, and which shows at any rate that his protest against entrance fees for churches was in the air.

  ON A VISIT TO ST. PAUL’S

  What can be hop’d from Priests who, ’gainst the Poor,
  For lack of two-pence, shut the church’s door;
  Who, true successors of the ancient leaven,
  Erect a turnpike on the road to Heaven? 
  “Knock, and it shall be open’d,” saith our LORD;
  “Knock, and pay two-pence,” say the Chapter Board: 
  The Showman of the booth the fee receives,
  And God’s house is again a “den of thieves.”

* * * * *

Page 237.  AMICUS REDIVIVUS.

London Magazine, December, 1823.

A preliminary sketch of the first portion of this essay will be found in the letter from Lamb to Sarah Hazlitt, written probably in November, 1823.  In Barry Cornwall’s Memoir of Lamb, Chapter VI., there is also an account of the accident to Dyer—­Procter (Barry Cornwall) having chanced to visit the Lambs just after the event.  For an account of George Dyer see notes to the essay on “Oxford in the Vacation”.  In 1823 he was sixty-eight; later he became quite blind.

We have another glimpse of G.D. on that fatal day, in the reminiscences of Mr. Ogilvie, an India House clerk with Lamb, as communicated to the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell (see Scribner’s Magazine, March, 1876):—­

At the time George Dyer was fished out of New River in front of Lamb’s house at Islington, after he was resuscitated, Mary brought him a suit of Charles’s clothes to put on while his own were drying.  Inasmuch as he was a giant of a man, and Lamb undersized; inasmuch, moreover, as Lamb’s wardrobe afforded only knee breeches for the nether limbs (Dyer’s were colossal), the spectacle he presented when the clothes were on—­or as much on as they could be—­was vastly ludicrous.

Allsop, in a letter to Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, remarked,