* * * * *

Page 48. In the Album of Miss——.

This poem was first printed in Blackwood’s Magazine, May, 1829, entitled “For a Young Lady’s Album.”  The identity of the young lady is not now discoverable:  probably a school friend of Emma Isola’s.

Page 48. In the Album of a very young Lady.

Josepha was a daughter of Mrs. Williams, of Fornham.

* * * * *

Page 49. In the Album of a French Teacher.

First printed in Blackwood’s Magazine, June, 1829, entitled “For the Album of:  Miss——­, French Teacher at Mrs. Gisborn’s School, Enfield.”  Page 49. In the Album of Miss Daubeny.

Miss Daubeny was a schoolfellow of Emma Isola’s, at Dulwich.

* * * * *

Page 50. In the Album of Mrs. Jane Towers.

Charles Clarke—­in line 7—­was Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877), a friend of the Lambs not only for his own sake, but for that of his wife, Mary Victoria Novello, whom he married in 1828 and who died as recently as 1898.  Their Recollections of Writers, 1878, have many interesting reminiscences of Charles and Mary Lamb.  Writing to Cowden Clarke on February 25, 1828, Lamb says:—­“I had a pleasant letter from your sister, greatly over acknowledging my poor sonnet....  Alas for sonnetting,’tis as the nerves are; all the summer I was dawdling among green lanes, and verses came as thick as fancies.  I am sunk winterly below prose and zero.”

Mrs. Towers lived at Standerwick, in Somersetshire, and was fairly well known in her day as a writer of books for children, The Children’s Fireside, etc.

* * * * *

Page 50. In my own Album.

This poem was first printed in The Bijou, 1828, edited by William
Fraser, under the title “Verses for an Album.”

* * * * *

MISCELLANEOUS

Page 51. Angel Help.

This poem was first printed in the New Monthly Magazine, 1827, with trifling differences, and the addition, at the end, of this couplet:—­

      Virtuous Poor Ones, sleep, sleep on,
      And, waking, find your labours done.

I am afraid that the “Nonsense Verses” on page 123 represent an attempt to make fun of this beautiful poem.

Aders’ house in Euston Square was hung with engravings principally of the German school (see the poem on page 94 addressed to him).

* * * * *

Page 52. The Christening.

These lines were first printed in Blackwood’s Magazine, May, 1829.

* * * * *

Page 53. On an Infant Dying as soon as Born.

This poem was first printed in The Gem, 1829. The Gem was then edited by Thomas Hood, whose child—­his firstborn—­it was thatinspired the poem.  Lamb sent the verses to Hood in May, 1827.