Thomas Hood (1799-1845), whom Lamb first met in connection with the London Magazine, of which Hood acted as sub-editor, married Jane Reynolds in 1824. John Hamilton Reynolds (1796-1852), her brother, wrote for the London Magazine over the signature "Edward Herbert." The Odes and Addresses appeared anonymously in the spring of 1825. Coleridge's attribution of the work to Lamb was not very happy; its amazing agility was quite out of his power. But Coleridge occasionally nodded in these matters, or he would not have been equally positive a few years earlier that Lamb was the author of Reynolds' Peter Bell.
In at least two of the odes and addresses the authors followed in Lamb's own footsteps and adapted to their own use some of his thunder. In the address to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster the argument for free admission, as expressed in Lamb's "Letter to Southey" in 1823 (see [pages 275-277]), is extended, with additional levity; and again in the ode to Mr. Bodkin, the Hon. Secretary to the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity, Lamb's Elia essay on "The Decay of Beggars" is emphasised. According to a copy of the book marked by Hood, now in the possession of Mr. Buxton Forman, Reynolds wrote only the odes to M'Adam, Dymoke, Sylvanus Urban, Elliston and the Dean and Chapter.
Compare Lamb's other remarks on punning in "Popular Fallacies" and "Distant Correspondents."
[Page 335,] line 9. Peter Pindar ... Colman. Peter Pindar was the name assumed by Dr. John Wolcot (1738-1819) when he lashed and satirised his contemporaries in his very numerous odes. Colman was George Colman the younger (1762-1836), the dramatist, and author of Broad Grins, 1802, a collection of free and easy comic verse.
[Page 335,] foot. The immortal Grimaldi. Joseph Grimaldi (1779-1837), the clown. He did not actually leave the stage until 1828, but his appearances had been only occasional for several years.
[Page 336,] second stanza. "Berkeley's Foote." This was Maria Foote (1797?-1867), the actress, afterwards Countess of Harrington, who was abandoned by Colonel Berkeley after the birth of two children, and whose woes were made public through a breach-of-promise action brought by her against "Pea Green" Hayes a little later.
[Page 337.] The Religion of Actors.
New Monthly Magazine, April, 1826. Not reprinted by Lamb; but known to be his by a sentence in a letter to Bernard Barton. This paper is of course as nonsensical as that on Liston.
[Page 337,] line 4 of essay. A celebrated tragic actor. Referring to the action for criminal conversation brought by Alderman Cox against Edmund Kean, in 1824, in which Kean was cast in £800 damages, and which led during the following seasons to hostile demonstrations against him both in England and America. For many performances he played only to men.