The notes that follow apply solely to the few points in the text that call for remark. More exhaustive comments on Lamb and Christ's Hospital will be found in the notes to the Elia essay on the same subject.
[Page 163,] line 23. The old Grey Friars. This monastery had been suppressed by Henry VIII. It was reinhabited by the Christ's Hospital boys; but was in great part destroyed in the Fire of London, the cloisters alone remaining. The other old part of Christ's Hospital, as this generation knows it, dates from after the Fire.
[Page 165,] line 9 from foot. Philip Quarll's Island. One of the imitations of Robinson Crusoe. The full title ran: The Hermit: or the unparalleled sufferings and surprising adventures of Mr. Philip Quarll, an Englishman, who was lately discovered by Mr. Dorrington, a Bristol Merchant, upon an uninhabited island in the South Seas; where he has lived above Fifty Years, without any human assistance, still continues to reside, and will not come away, 1727. Lamb refers again to these excursions in his Elia essay on "Newspapers."
[Page 168,] line 8 from foot. The Rev. James Boyer. Lamb writes more fully of his old schoolmaster in the Elia essay. Boyer was elected 1776, and retired in 1799, when the governors presented him with a staff. He died in 1814.
[Page 170,] line 4 from foot. Grecians. Lamb writes more fully of the Grecians in his Elia essay. He was himself never more than Deputy-Grecian.
[Page 171,] line 4 from foot. William Wales. William Wales was appointed 1776, and died 1798. The King's Boys are now called "Mathemats," i.e., Members of the Royal Mathematical Foundation for Sea Service. Leigh Hunt says of William Wales in his Autobiography: "He was a good man, of plain, simple manners, with a heavy large person and a benign countenance. When he was at Otaheite, the natives played him a trick while bathing, and stole his small-clothes; which we used to think a liberty scarcely credible."
[Page 172,] line 5 from foot. Processions ... at Easter. The boys when in London visited the Lord Mayor on Easter Tuesday.
[Page 173,] line 4. St. Matthew's day. September 21. Speech Day is now at the end of the Summer Term.
[Page 173,] line 8. Barnes ... Markland ... Camden. Joshua Barnes (1654-1712), Greek scholar and antiquary; Jeremiah Markland (1693-1776), Greek scholar; and William Camden (1551-1623), the antiquary—all Christ's Hospital boys.
[Page 173,] line 18. The carol. I cannot give the words of this particular carol. Mr. E. H. Pearce, the latest historian of Christ's Hospital, tells me that it was probably not a school carol peculiar to Christ's Hospital, like the Easter anthems (which were composed annually), but an ordinary Christmas hymn. "An old Crug," i.e., Old Christ's Hospitaller, wrote to Notes and Queries, December 22, 1855, asking if any reader could supply the missing stanzas of a Christmas carol which the Blue Coat boys used to sing fifty years before. This was one stanza (from memory):—