To the circumstance that Leigh Hunt edited The Reflector, which was founded by his brother in 1810 as a literary and political quarterly, may be attributed in a large measure the beginning of Lamb's career as an essayist. Leigh Hunt, himself a Christ's Hospitaller, sought his contributors among old scholars of that school; from whom, as he remarked in the little note prefixed to the two-volume edition of the periodical, came "the largest and most entertaining part." Among these contributors were Lamb, George Dyer, Thomas Barnes, afterwards editor of The Times, Thomes Mitchell, classical scholar, James Scholefield, afterwards Greek Professor at Cambridge, Hunt himself, and Barron Field, who, though not actually a Christ's Hospitaller, was through his father, Henry Field, apothecary to the school, connected with it.
Until Lamb received Hunt's invitation to let his fancy play to what extent he would in The Reflector's pages, he had received little or no encouragement as a writer; and he was naturally so diffident that without some external impulse he rarely brought himself to do his own work at all. Between John Woodvil (1802) and the first Reflector papers (1810) he had written "Mr. H.," performed his share in the children's books, and compiled the Dramatic Specimens: a tale of work which, considering that it was also a social period, and a busy period at the India House, is not trifling. But between the last Reflector paper (1811 or 1812) and the first Elia essay (1820) Lamb seems to have written nothing save the essays on Christ's Hospital, the "Confessions of a Drunkard," a few brief notes, reviews and dramatic criticisms, mainly at the instigation of Leigh Hunt, and some scraps of verse chiefly for The Champion. The world owes a great debt to Leigh Hunt for discerning Lamb's gifts and allowing him free rein. The comic letters to The Reflector may not be Lamb at his best, though they are excellent stepping-stones to that state; but upon the essays on Shakespeare's tragedies and Hogarth's genius it is doubtful if Lamb could have improved at any period.
The Reflector ran only to four numbers, which were very irregularly issued, and it then ceased. It ran nominally from October 1810 to December 1811. Crabb Robinson mentions reading No. I. on May 15, 1811.
Lamb, it may be remarked here, was destined to contribute to yet another Reflector. In 1832 Moxon started a weekly paper of that name in which part of Lamb's Elia essay on the "Defect of Imagination in Modern Paintings" was printed. The venture, however, quickly failed, and all trace of it seems to have vanished.
Lamb's first Reflector paper was entitled "On the Inconveniences Resulting from Being Hanged."
It appeared in No. II., 1811, and was reprinted in the Works, 1818.
He made yet another use of the central idea of this essay. The farce, "The Pawnbroker's Daughter," written in 1825, turns upon the resuscitation of a hanged man, Jack Pendulous.
[Page 68,] line 6. Smoke his cravat. To smoke was old slang for to see, to notice. East-enders to-day would say "Pipe his necktie!"
[Page 72,] line 1. The solution ... in "Hamlet."
First Clown. What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter?