Page 287.  III.—­THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST.

New Monthly Magazine, January, 1826.

Page 288, line 12. In Mandeville.  In Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, a favourite book of Lamb’s.  See Vol.  I., note to “The Good Clerk.”

Page 288.  IV.—­THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING, ETC.

New Monthly Magazine, January, 1826.

Page 288.  V.—­THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH.

New Monthly Magazine, January, 1826.

Page 290.  VI.—­THAT ENOUGH is AS GOOD AS A FEAST.

New Monthly Magazine, January, 1826.

Page 291.  VII.—­OF TWO DISPUTANTS, THE WARMEST IS GENERALLY IN THE
WRONG.

New Monthly Magazine, January, 1826.

Page 291, line 4 from foot. Little Titubus.  I do not know who this was, if any more than an abstraction; but it should be remembered that Lamb himself stammered.

Page 292.  VIII.—­THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, ETC.

New Monthly Magazine, January, 1826.

Page 292.  IX.—­THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST.

New Monthly Magazine, January, 1826.

Compare the reflections on puns in the essay on “Distant Correspondents.”  Compare also the review of Hood’s Odes and Addresses (Vol.  I.).  Cary’s account of a punning contest after Lamb’s own heart makes the company vie with each in puns on the names of herbs.  After anise, mint and other words had been ingeniously perverted Lamb’s own turn, the last, was reached, and it seemed impossible that anything was left for him.  He hesitated.  “Now then, let us have it,” cried the others, all expectant.  “Patience,” he replied; “it’s c-c-cumin.”

Page 293, line 18. One of Swift’s Miscellanies.  This joke, often attributed to Lamb himself, will be found in Ars Punica, sine flos Linguarum, The Art of Punning; or, The Flower of Languages, by Dr. Sheridan and Swift, which will be found in Vol.  XIII. of Scott’s edition of Swift.  Among the directions to the punster is this:—­

Rule 3.  The Brazen Rule.  He must have better assurance, like Brigadier C——­, who said, “That, as he was passing through a street, he made to a country fellow who had a hare swinging on a stick over his shoulder, and, giving it a shake, asked him whether it was his own hair or a periwig!” Whereas it is a notorious Oxford jest.

Page 294, line 8. Virgil ... broken Cremona.  Swift (as Lamb explained in the original essay in the New Monthly Magazine), seeing a lady’s mantua overturning a violin (possibly a Cremona), quoted Virgil’s line:  “Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae!” (Eclogues, IX., 28), “Mantua, alas! too near unhappy Cremona.”

Page 294.  X.—­THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES.

New Monthly Magazine, March, 1826.