Page 266, line 9. “Guzman de Alfarache.”  The Picaresque romance by Mateo Aleman—­Vida y Lechos del picaro Guzman de Alfarache, Part I., 1599; Part II., 1605.  It was translated into English by James Mabbe in 1622 as The Rogue; or, The Life of Guzman de Alfarache.  Lamb had a copy, which is now in my possession, with Mary Lamb’s name in it.

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Page 266.  REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR’S COMING OF AGE.

London Magazine, January, 1823.

This paper, being printed in the same number as that which announced
Elia’s death, was signed “Elia’s Ghost.”

Lamb returned to this vein of fancy two years or so later when (in 1825) he contributed to his friend William Hone’s Every-Day Book the petition of the Twenty-Ninth of February, a day of which Hone had taken no account, and of the Twelfth of August, which from being kept as the birthday of King George IV. during the time that he was Prince of Wales, was, on his accession to the throne, disregarded in favour of April 23, St. George’s Day.  For these letters see Vol.  I. of this edition.

Page 271, line 15. “On the bat’s back ...” From Ariel’s song in “The Tempest.”  Lamb confesses, in at least two of his letters, to a precisely similar plight.

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Page 271.  THE WEDDING.

London Magazine, June, 1825.

The wedding was that of Sarah Burney, daughter of Lamb’s old friends, Rear-Admiral James Burney and his wife Sarah Burney, to her cousin, John Payne, of Pall Mall, at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, in April, 1821.  The clergyman was the Rev. C.P.  Burney, who was not, however, vicar of St. Mildred’s in the Poultry, but of St. Paul’s, Deptford, in Kent.  Admiral Burney lived only six months longer, dying in November.

Canon Ainger pointed out that when Lamb was revising this essay for its appearance in the Last Essays of Elia, he was, like the admiral, about to lose by marriage Emma Isola, who was to him and his sister what Miss Burney had been to her parents.  She married Edward Moxon in July, 1833.

Page 274, line 8. An unseasonable disposition to levity.  Writing to P.G.  Patmore in 1827 Lamb says:  “I have been to a funeral, where I made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of the mourners.”  Again, writing to Southey:  “I am going to stand godfather; I don’t like the business; I cannot muster up decorum for these occasions; I shall certainly disgrace the font; I was at Hazlitt’s marriage and was like to have been turned out several times during the ceremony.  Anything awful makes me laugh.  I misbehaved once at a funeral.”

Page 274, line 24. Miss T——­s.  In the London Magazine “Miss Turner’s.”

Page 274, line 27. Black ... the costume of an author.  See note below.

Page 274, line 29. Lighter colour.  Here the London Magazine had:  “a pea-green coat, for instance, like the bridegroom.”