A few years afterwards Lamb told Carlyle he regretted that the Faux conspiracy had failed—there would have been such a magnificent explosion. Carlyle cites this remark in his diary in evidence of Lamb's imbecility, but I fancy that Lamb had merely taken the measure of his visitor.
Lamb's reference to Hazlitt as an ex-Jesuit with the mention of Douay and M——th (Maynooth, the Irish Roman Catholic College), is, of course, chaff, resulting from Hazlitt's defence of this arch-Romanist.
After "Father of the Church" (page 280, line 7) Lamb had written in The Reflector:—
"The conclusion of his discourse is so pertinent to my subject, that I must beg your patience while I transcribe it. He has been drawing a parallel between the fire which Vaux and his accomplices meditated, and that which James and John were willing to have called down from heaven upon the heads of the Samaritans who would not receive our Saviour into their houses. 'Lastly,' he says, 'it (the powder treason) was a fire so strange that it had no example. The apostles, indeed, pleaded a mistaken precedent for the reasonableness of their demand, they desired leave to do but even as Elias did. The Greeks only retain this clause, it is not in the Bibles of the Church of Rome. And, really," etc.
I have collated the passage quoted by Lamb with the original edition of the sermon. Of the Latin phrases which Taylor does not translate, the first is from Sidonius Apollinaris, Carm., XXII.: "The stall of the Thracian King, the altars of Busiris, the feasts of Antiphates, and the Tauric sovereignty of Thoas." Rex Bistonius was Diomed, King of the Bistones, in Thrace, who fed his horses with human flesh, and was himself thrown to be their food by Hercules. Busiris, King of Egypt, seized and sacrificed all foreigners who visited this country, and he also was slain by Hercules. Antiphates was King of the Læstrygonians in Sicily, man-eating giants, who destroyed eleven of the ships of Ulysses. Thoas was King of Lemnos, and when the Lemnian women killed all the men in the island, his daughter, Hypsipylé, then elected queen, saved him, and he fled to Taurus where he became a king. This is the only legend of cruelty associated with the name of Thoas, and of course he is not the prepetrator; the crime is that of the women.
Concerning Taylor's second quotation, I am informed that the words "ergo quæ ... tuas qui" occur (virtually) in Prudentius, Cathemerinon, V., 81. The Latin is monkish, but means evidently: "But that massacre of princes who fell unavenged, Christ brooked not, lest perchance the house that His Father had built should be overthrown. And so what tongue can unfold Thy praise, O Christ, who dost abase the disloyal people and its treacherous ruler?"
[Page 284,] line 11 from foot. Bellamy's room. The old refreshment room of the House. There is a description of it in Sketches by Boz—"A Parliamentary Sketch."
[Page 284,] line 6 from foot. Berenice's curl. After these words came, in The Reflector version of the essay, this passage:—
"—all, in their degrees, glittering somewhere. Sussex misses her member[71] on earth, but is consoled to view him, on a starry night, siding the Great Bear. Cambridge beholds hers[72] next Scorpio. The gentle Castlereagh curdles in the Milky Way."
[71] "J—— F——, Esq."