The title ran thus:—­

    PETER’S NET

    BY THE AUTHOR OF “ELIA”

    No.  II.—­On the Total Defect of the faculty of Imagination
    observable in the works of modern British Artists.

For explanation of this title see note to the essay that follows.  When reprinting the essay in the Last Essays of Elia, 1833, Lamb altered the title to the one it now bears:  the period referred to thus seeming to be about 1798, but really 1801-1803.

Page 249, first line of essay. Dan Stuart.  See below.

Page 249, line 2 of essay. The Exhibition at Somerset House. Between the years 1780 and 1838 the Royal Academy held its exhibitions at Somerset House.  It then moved, first to Trafalgar Square, in a portion of the National Gallery, and then to Burlington House, its present quarters, in 1869.  The Morning Post office is still almost opposite Somerset House, at the corner of Wellington Street.

Page 250, line 5. A word or two of D.S. Daniel Stuart (1766-1846), one of the Perthshire Stuarts, whose father was out in the ’45, and his grandfather in the ’15, began, with his brother, to print the Morning Post in 1788.  In 1795 they bought it for L600, Daniel assumed the editorship, and in two years’ time the circulation had risen from 350 to 1,000.  Mackintosh (afterwards Sir James), Stuart’s brother-in-law, was on the staff; and in 1797 Coleridge began to contribute.  Coleridge’s “Devil’s Walk” was the most popular thing printed in Stuart’s time; his political articles also helped enormously to give the paper prestige.  Stuart sold the Morning Post in 1803 for L25,000, and then turned his attention to the development of The Courier, an evening paper, in which he also had occasional assistance from Coleridge and more regular help from Mackintosh.

Lamb’s memory served him badly in the essay.  So far as I can discover, his connection with the Morning Post, instead of ending when Stuart sold the paper, can hardly be said to have existed until after that event.  The paper changed hands in September, 1803 (two years after the failure of The Albion), and Lamb’s hand almost immediately begins to be apparent.  He had, we know, made earlier efforts to get a footing there, but had been only moderately successful.  The first specimens prepared for Stuart, in 1800, were not accepted.  In the late summer of 1801 he was writing for the Morning Chronicle—­a few comic letters, as I imagine—­under James Perry; but that lasted only a short time.  At the end of 1801 Lamb tried the Post again.  In January and February, 1802, Stuart printed some epigrams by him on public characters, two criticisms of G.F.  Cooke, in Richard III. and Lear, and the essay “The Londoner” (see Vol.  I.).  Probably there were also some paragraphs.  In a letter to Rickman in January, 1802, Lamb says that he is leaving the Post, partly on account of his difficulty in writing dramatic criticisms on the same night as the performance.