[Page 327.] VI.—A Character.
The New Times, August 25, 1825. Signed "Lepus."
This differed from the five papers that have preceded it in inaugurating a new series entitled "Sketches Original and Select." Lepus, however, contributed no more. I have no idea who the original Egomet was, possibly an India House clerk. Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, the Janus Weathercock of the London Magazine, had occasionally used the pseudonym Egomet Bonmot, and Lamb may have borrowed it.
[Page 328,] line 26. "There is no reciprocity." Lamb may have been remembering a story in Joe Miller about the reciprocity being "all on one side."
[Page 328,] line 6 from foot. "Nimium vicini." In allusion to Virgil's (Ecl., IX., 28) "Mantua væ miseræ nimium vicina Cremonæ"—"Mantua alas, too near ill-starred Cremona" (for it shared the fate of Cremona, which had rebelled against Augustus and suffered confiscation). Lamb comments in his "Popular Fallacies" upon Swift's punning use of the phrase.
[Page 329.] Reflections in the Pillory.
London Magazine, March, 1825. Not reprinted by Lamb.
The editor's note is undoubtedly Lamb's, as is, of course, the whole imaginary story. It must have been about this time that Lamb was writing his "Ode to the Treadmill" which appeared in The New Times in October, 1825.