Lamb's phrase, "Mr. Shoemaker Gifford," had reason for its existence. William Gifford (1756-1826) was apprenticed to a shoemaker in 1772. Lamb later repaid some of his debt in the sonnet "St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford," which appeared in The Examiner, October 3, 1819, and was reprinted in The Poetical Recreations of "The Champion" in 1822. Gifford, who was editor of the Quarterly on its establishment in 1809, held the post until his death, in 1826.
The original copy of Lamb's review of Wordsworth, Mr. John Murray informs me, no longer exists. I have collated the extracts with the first edition of the Excursion and have also corrected the Tasso.
[Page 187,] line 3 of essay. To be called the Recluse. Wordsworth never completed this scheme. A fragment called The Recluse, Book I., was published in 1888.
[Page 188,] line 7. Which Thomson so feelingly describes. This is the passage, from Thomson's Seasons, "Winter," 799-809:—
There, through the prison of unbounded wilds,
Barr'd by the hand of Nature from escape,
Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around
Strikes his sad eye, but deserts lost in snow;
And heavy-loaded groves; and solid floods,
That stretch'd, athwart the solitary vast,
Their icy horrors to the frozen main;
And cheerless towns far-distant, never bless'd,
Save when its annual course the caravan
Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay,
With news of human-kind.
[Page 200.] On the Melancholy of Tailors.
The Champion, December 4, 1814. Works, 1818.
The editor of The Champion was then John Scott, afterwards editor of the London Magazine, which printed Lamb's best work. From a letter written by Lamb to Scott in 1814 (in the late Dr. Birkbeck Hill's Talks about Autographs, 1896) it seems that he was to contribute more or less regularly to The Champion. Lamb wrote:—
"Sir,—Your explanation is perfectly pleasant to me, and I accede to your proposal most willingly.