"As I began with the beginning of this month, I will if you please call upon you for your part of the engagement (supposing I shall have performed mine) on the 1st of March next, and thence forward if it suit you quarterly—you will occasionally wink at Briskets and Veiny Pieces.
"Your Obt. Svt.,
C. Lamb.
This essay on "Tailors" is, however, the only piece by Lamb that can be identified, although probably many of the passages from old authors quoted in The Champion in Scott's time were contributed by Lamb. These might be the briskets and veiny pieces he refers to. On January 23, 1814, is "A Challenge" of the Learned Dog at Drury Lane which he might have written; but it is not interesting now. Later, after John Thelwall took over The Champion in 1818, Lamb contributed various epigrams, which will be found in Vol. IV. of the present edition.
Lamb seems to have sent the present essay to Wordsworth, whose reply we may imagine took the form of an account of certain tailors within his own experience that did not comply with Lamb's scription; since Lamb's answer to that letter is the one dated beginning, "Your experience about tailors seems to be in point blank opposition to Burton [Lamb's essay is signed 'Burton, Junior']" and so forth.
When preparing this essay for the Works, 1818, Lamb omitted certain portions. The footnote on page 202 originally continued thus:—
"But commend me above all to a shop opposite Middle Row, in Holborn, where, by the ingenious contrivance of the master taking in three partners, there is a physical impossibility of the conversation ever flagging, while 'the four' alternately toss it from one to the other, and at whatever time you drop in, you are sure of a discussion: an expedient which Mr. A——m would do well to think on, for with all the alacrity with which he and his excellent family are so dexterous to furnish their successive contributions, I have sometimes known the continuity of the dialogue broken into, and silence for a few seconds to intervene."
In connection with Mr. A——m there is a passage in a letter from Mary Lamb to Miss Hutchinson in 1818, wherein she says that when the Lambs, finding London insupportable after a long visit to Calne, in Wiltshire (at the Morgans'), had taken lodgings in Dalston, Charles was so much the creature of habit, or the slave of his barber, that he went to the Temple every morning to be shaved, on a roundabout way to the India House. This would very likely be Mr. A——m, Flower de Luce Court being just opposite the Temple, off Fetter Lane. The London directories in those days ignored barbers; hence his name must remain in disguise.
In The Champion, also, the paragraph on page 203, beginning, "I think," etc., ran thus:—
"I think, then, that they [the causes of tailors' melancholy] may be reduced to three, omitting some subordinate ones; viz.