of Dyer’s immersion, that Lamb had said to him:  “If he had been drowned it would have made me famous.  Think of having a Crowner’s quest, and all the questions and dark suspicions of murder.  People would haunt the spot and say, ‘Here died the poet of Grongar Hill.’” The poet of “Grongar Hill” was, of course, John Dyer—­another of Lamb’s instances of the ambiguities arising from proper names.

Page 238, line 19. The rescue.  At these words, in the London Magazine, Lamb put this footnote:—­

“The topography of my cottage, and its relation to the river, will explain this; as I have been at some cost to have the whole engraved (in time, I hope, for our next number), as well for the satisfaction of the reader, as to commemorate so signal a deliverance.”

The cottage at Colebrooke Row, it should be said, stands to this day (1911); but the New River has been covered in.  There is, however, no difficulty in reproducing the situation.  One descends from the front door by a curved flight of steps, a little path from which, parallel with the New River, takes one out into Colebrooke Row (or rather Duncan Terrace, as this part of the Row is now called).  Under the front door-steps is another door from which Dyer may possibly have emerged; if so it would be the simplest thing for him to walk straight ahead, and find himself in the river.

Page 240, line 22. That Abyssinian traveller.  James Bruce (1730-1794), the explorer of the sources of the Nile, was famous many years before his Travels appeared, in 1790, the year after which Lamb left school.  The New River, made in 1609-1613, has its source in the Chadwell and Amwell springs.  It was peculiarly Lamb’s river:  Amwell is close to Blakesware and Widford; Lamb explored it as a boy; at Islington he lived opposite it, and rescued George Dyer from its depths; and he retained its company both at Enfield and Edmonton.

In the essay on “Newspapers” is a passage very similar to this.

Page 240, line 32. Eternal novity.  Writing to Hood in 1824 Lamb speaks of the New River as “rather elderly by this time.”  Dyer, it should be remembered, was of Emmanuel College, and the historian of Cambridge University.

Page 241, last paragraph.  George Dyer contributed “all that was original” to Valpy’s edition of the classics—­141 volumes.  He also wrote the History of The University and Colleges of Cambridge, including notices relating to the Founders and Eminent Men.  Among the eminent men of Cambridge are Jeremiah Markland (1693-1776), of Christ’s Hospital and St. Peter’s, the classical commentator; and Thomas Gray, the poet, the sweet lyrist of Peterhouse, who died in 1771, when Dyer was sixteen.  Tyrwhitt would probably be Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-1786), of Queen’s College, Oxford, the editor of Chaucer; but Robert Tyrwhitt (1735-1817), his brother, the Unitarian, might be expected to take interest in Dyer also, for G.D. was, in Lamb’s phrase, a “One-Goddite” too.  The mild Askew was Anthony Askew (1722-1772), doctor and classical scholar, who, being physician to Christ’s Hospital when Dyer was there, lent the boy books, and was very kind to him.