[Page 178,] line 24. Killigrew's play. "The Parson's Wedding," a comedy, by Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683). Lamb included this speech of the Fine Lady under the heading Facetiæ in his extracts from the Garrick plays in Hone's Table Book, 1827.
[Page 178,] line 32. Charron on "Wisdom." Two translations of the Sieur de Charron, De la Sagesse, might have been read by Lamb: Dean Stanhope's (1697) and Samson Lennard's (1612). Probably it was Lennard's, since the passage may be found on page 129 of his 1670 edition, a quarto, and page 145 in the 1640 edition, whereas in Stanhope it is page 371. Lennard's translation runs thus (Book I., Chap. 39):—
The action of planting and making man is shameful, and all the parts thereof; the congredients, the preparations, the instruments, and whatsoever serves thereunto is called and accounted shameful; and there is nothing more unclean, in the whole Nature of man. The action of destroying and killing him [is] honorable, and that which serves thereunto glorious: we guild it, we enrich it, we adorn ourselves with it, we carry it by our sides, in our hands, upon our shoulders. We disdain to go to the birth of man; every man runs to see him die, whether it be in his bed, or in some public place, or in the field. When we go about to make a man, we hide ourselves, we put out the candle, we do it by stealth. It is a glory and pomp to unmake a man, to kill himself; we light the candles to see him die, we execute him at high noon, we sound a trumpet, we enter the combat, and we slaughter him when the sun is at highest. There is but one way to beget, to make a man, a thousand and a thousand means, inventions, arts to destroy him. There is no reward, honour or recompense assigned to those that know how to encrease, to preserve human nature; all honour, greatness, riches, dignities, empires, triumphs, trophies are appointed for those that know how to afflict, trouble, destroy it.
[Page 178,] last line. What could Pope mean?
What made (say Montaigne, or more sage Charron)
Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon?
Pope's Moral Essays, Ep. I., 87-88.
It has been held that Pope called Charron more sage because he somewhat mitigated the excessive fatalism (Pyrrhonism) of Montaigne.
[Page 179.] IV.—[A Sylvan Surprise.]
The Examiner, September 12, 1813. Reprinted in The Indicator, January 3, 1821. We know it to be Lamb's by the signature ‡; also from a sentence in Leigh Hunt's essay on the "Suburbs of Genoa," in The Literary Examiner, August 23, 1823, where, speaking of an expected sight, he says: "C. L. could not have been more startled when he saw the chimney-sweeper reclining in Richmond meadows."
[Page 179.] V.—[Street Conversation.]