First printed in the London Magazine, September, 1820.  By a curious oversight the error in Knowles’s initials was repeated in the Album Verses, 1830, Knowles’s first name being, of course, James.  James Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862) had been a doctor, a schoolmaster, an actor, and a travelling elocutionist, before he took seriously to writing for the stage.  His first really successful play was “Virginius,” written for Edmund Kean, transferred to Macready, and produced in 1820.  His greatest triumph was “The Hunchback,” 1832.  Lamb, who met Knowles through William Hazlitt, of Wem, the essayist’s father, wrote both the prologue and epilogue for Knowles’s play “The Wife,” 1833 (see pages 146-7).

* * * * *

Page 63. Quatrains to the Editor of the “Every-Day Book.”

First printed in the London Magazine, May, 1825, and copied by Hone into the Every-Day Book for July 9 of the same year.  William Hone (see Vol.  I. notes), 1780-1842, was a bookseller, pamphleteer and antiquary, who, before he took to editing his Every-Day Book in 1825, had passed through a stormy career on account of his critical outspokenness and want of ordinary political caution; and Lamb did by no means a fashionable thing when he commended Hone thus publicly.  The Every-Day Book, begun in 1825, was, when published in 1826, dedicated by Hone to Charles Lamb and his sister.  “Your daring to publish me your ‘friend,’ with your ‘proper name’ annexed,” Hone wrote, “I shall never forget.”

Page 63.  Acrostics.

In his more leisurely years, at Islington and Enfield, Lamb wrote a great number of acrostics—­many more probably than have been preserved—­of which these, printed in Album Verses, are all that he cared to see in print.  Probably he found his chief impulse in Emma Isola’s schoolfellows and friends, who must have been very eager to obtain in their albums a contribution from so distinguished a gentleman as Elia, and who passed on their requests through his adopted daughter.  I have not been able to trace the identity of several of them.  The lady who desired her epitaph was Mrs. Williams in whose house Emma Isola was governess.  While there Emma was seriously ill, and Lamb travelled down to Fornham, in Suffolk, in 1830, to bring her home.  On returning he wrote Mrs. Williams several letters, in one of which, dated Good Friday, he said:—­“I beg you to have inserted in your county paper something like this advertisement; ’To the nobility, gentry, and others, about Bury,—­C.  Lamb respectfully informs his friends and the public in general, that he is leaving off business in the acrostic line, as he is going into an entirely new line.  Rebuses and Charades done as usual, and upon the old terms.  Also, Epitaphs to suit the memory of any person deceased.’”

Mrs. Williams probably then suggested that Lamb should write her epitaph, for in his next letter he says:—­“I have ventured upon some lines, which combine my old acrostic talent (which you first found out) with my new profession of epitaphmonger.  As you did not please to say, when you would die, I have left a blank space for the date.  May kind heaven be a long time in filling it up.”