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Page 72. Pindaric Ode to the Tread Mill.

First printed in The New Times, October 24, 1825.  The version there given differed considerably from that preserved by Lamb.  It had no divisions.  At the end of what is now the first strophe qame these lines:—­

        Now, by Saint Hilary,
        (A Saint I love to swear by,
        Though I should forfeit thereby
        Five ill-spared shillings to your well-warm’d seat,
        Worshipful Justices of Worship-street;
      Or pay my crown
      At great Sir Richard’s still more awful mandate down:)
        They raise my gorge—­
        Those Ministers of Ann, or the First George,
        (Which was it? 
        For history is silent, and my closet—­
        Reading affords no clue;
        I have the story, Pope, alone from you;)
          In such a place, &c.

Lamb offered the Ode to his friend Walter Wilson, for his work on Defoe, to which Lamb contributed prose criticisms (see Vol.  I.), but Wilson did not use it.  The letter making this offer, together with the poem, differing very slightly in one or two places, is preserved in the Bodleian.

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Page 75. Going or Gone.

First printed in Hone’s Table Book, 1827, signed Elia, under the title “Gone or Going.”  It was there longer, after stanza 6 coming the following:—­

      Had he mended in right time,
      He need not in night time,
      (That black hour, and fright-time,)
        Till sexton interr’d him,
      Have groan’d in his coffin,
      While demons stood scoffing—­
      You’d ha’ thought him a-coughing—­
        My own father[28] heard him!

      Could gain so importune,
      With occasion opportune,
      That for a poor Fortune,
        That should have been ours[29],
      In soul he should venture
      To pierce the dim center,
      Where will-forgers enter Amid the dark Powers?—­

And in the Table Book the last stanza ended thus:—­

      And flaunting Miss Waller—­
      That soon must befal her,
      Which makes folks seem taller[30],—­
        Though proud, once, as Juno!

[Footnote 28:  Who sat up with him.]

[Footnote 29:  I have this fact from Parental tradition only.]

[Footnote 30:  Death lengthens people to the eye.]

To annotate this curious tale of old friendships, dating back, as I suppose, in some cases to Lamb’s earliest memories, both of London and Hertfordshire, is a task that is probably beyond completion.  The day is too distant.  But a search in the Widford register and churchyard reveals a little information and oral tradition a little more.

Stanza 2. Rich Kitty Wheatley.  The Rev. Joseph Whately, vicar of Widford in the latter half of the eighteenth century, married Jane Plumer, sister of William Plumer, of Blakesware, the employer of Mrs. Field, Lamb’s grandmother.  Archbishop Whately was their son.  Kitty Wheatley may have been a relative.