[Page 272,] line 6 from foot. An equivocal term. Hunt's Story of Rimini was reviewed, with Maga's deepest scorn, in Blackwood for November, 1817, under the heading, "The Cockney School of Poetry." Precisely what was the equivocal term referred to by Lamb I do not discover; but unfair emphasis was laid by the reviewer on the poem's alleged incestuous character.
[Page 273,] line 11. His handwriting. In the postscript to his private letter (of apology) to Southey (see above), Lamb took this back.
[Page 273,] line 18. The "Political Justice." Godwin's Enquiry into Political Justice, 1793, wherein the marriage ceremony meets with little respect.
[Page 273,] line 28. Sundry harsh things ... against our friend C. Perhaps a reference to The Examiner's criticism of Remorse, in 1813. Coleridge, writing to Southey about it, says:—
They were forced to affect admiration of the Tragedy, but yet abuse me they must, and so comes the old infamous crambe bis millies cocta of the "sentimentalities, puerilities, whinings, and meannesses, both of style and thought" in my former writings....
[Page 274,] line 3. "Foliage." Leigh Hunt published Foliage in 1818. It contains, among other familiar epistles, one to Charles Lamb, reprinted, as was the poem on his son, from The Examiner. This is one stanza to Thornton Hunt:—
Ah, first-born of thy mother,
When life and hope were new,
Kind playmate of thy brother,
Thy sister, father too;
My light, where'er I go,
My bird, when prison bound,
My hand in hand companion,—no,
My prayers shall hold thee round.
[Page 274,] line 10. The other gentleman. William Hazlitt. Lamb first met Hazlitt about 1805, and they were intimate, with occasional differences, until Hazlitt's death in 1830. Lamb was with him at the end.
[Page 275,] line 1. You were pleased (you know where). Lamb had been a Unitarian, as had Coleridge and many others of his friends. Later, indeed, he claimed communion with no sect; while Coleridge became as much against Unitarianism as he had once been for it. Southey was himself converted to Unitarianism by Coleridge, in 1794. Later, however, the Church of England had few stouter supporters. What Lamb means by "You know where" I have not been able to discover—a memory possessed possibly only by Lamb and Southey.
[Page 275,] line 12. The last time. The only portion of this "Letter" which Lamb preserved began at this point. He rewrote this particular paragraph and included the remainder in Last Essays of Elia, in 1833, under the title, "The Tombs in the Abbey."