This note is already so long that I hesitate to add to it by quoting from Wither the passages referred to by Lamb. They are, moreover, easily identifiable.
George Wither, or Withers, was born in 1588. His Abuses Stript and Whipt was published in 1613; his Shepherd's Hunting, written in part while its author was in the Marshalsea prison for his plain speaking in Abuses, was published in 1615; Wither's Motto in 1621, and Fair Virtue, the Mistress of Philarete, in 1622, but it may have been composed long before. Wither died in 1667. His light remained under a bushel for many years. The Percy Reliques, 1765, began the revival of Wither's fame; George Ellis's Specimens, 1805, continued it; and then came Lamb, and Gutch, and Southey, and it was assured.
[Page 211,] line 10. No Shaftesbury, no Villiers, no Wharton. Referring to the victims of Dryden and Pope's satires—the first Earl of Shaftesbury in Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel," "Albion and Albanius" and "The Medal;" Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham, in "Absalom and Achitophel" and in Pope's third "Moral Essay;" Philip, Duke of Wharton in Pope's "Epistle to Sir Richard Temple."
[Page 211,] line 23. Where Faithful is arraigned. Faithful was accused of railing also upon Lord Desire of Vain Glory, my old Lord Lechery and Sir Having Greedy.
[Page 215.] Five Dramatic Criticisms.
None of these were reprinted by Lamb.
During the year 1819 Leigh Hunt's Examiner gave Lamb his first encouragement to indulge in those raptures upon comedians which no one has expressed so well as he. The notices that follow preceded his Elia essays on the "Old Actors" by some three years, although, as is pointed out in the notes to that work, the essay on the "Acting of Munden" first saw the light in The Examiner of November 7 and 8, 1819, as one of the present series. The central figure, however, of the five pieces here collected together is Miss Kelly, Lamb's friend and favourite actress of his middle and later life, whom he began to praise in 1813 (see "The New Acting," page 177), and in praising whom he never tired.
Lamb's sweet allusion to Miss Kelly's "divine plain face" is well known. It may be interesting, to add Oxberry's description: "Her face is round and pleasing, though not handsome; her eyes are light blue; her forehead is peculiarly low ... her smile is peculiarly beautiful and may be said to completely sun her countenance."