[Page 365,] line 3. I remember Bacon ... This possibly is the passage referred to:—
Neither let us be thought to sacrifice to our mother the earth, though we advise, that in digging or ploughing the earth for health, a quantity of claret wine be poured thereon (History of Life and Death, Operation 5, No. 33).
[Page 365,] last line of essay. Surely Swift must have seen ... Swift's Directions to Servants was published in 1745, after the author's death.
[Page 366.] VIII.—Reminiscence of Sir Jeffery Dunstan.
Hone's Every-Day Book, Vol. II., June 22, 1826. Signed "C. L." Not reprinted by Lamb.
The following account of the Garrat election was given in Sir Richard Phillips' A Morning's Walk from London to Kew, 1817, quoted by Hone:—
Southward of Wandsworth, a road extends nearly two miles to the village of Lower Tooting, and nearly midway are a few houses, or hamlet, by the side of a small common, called Garrat, from which the road itself is called Garrat Lane. Various encroachments on this common led to an association of the neighbours about three-score years since, when they chose a president, or mayor, to protect their rights; and the time of their first election being the period of a new parliament, it was agreed that the mayor should be re-chosen after every general election. Some facetious members of the club gave, in a few years, local notoriety to this election; and, when party spirit ran high in the days of Wilkes and Liberty, it was easy to create an appetite for a burlesque election among the lower orders of the Metropolis. The publicans at Wandsworth, Tooting, Battersea, Clapham, and Vauxhall, made a purse to give it character; and Mr. Foote rendered its interest universal, by calling one of his inimitable farces "The Mayor of Garrat."
In 1826, the year of Hone's literary outburst on the subject, which should be referred to by any one curious in the matter, an attempt was made to revive the Garrat humours; but it was too late for success; the joke was dead.
Dunstan was a stunted, quick-witted and quick-tongued dealer in old wigs—a well-known street and tavern figure in his day. He contested Garrat in 1781 against "Sir" John Harper ("who made an oath against work in his youth and was never known to break it"). Sir John then won. Dunstan's speech is quoted in full by Hone from an old broadside. "Gentlemen," he said, "as I am not an orator or personable man, be assured I am an honest member." When Harper died in 1785 Sir Jeffery was returned, as many as 50,000 people attending the election. Dunstan used to recite his speeches in public-houses, where collections were made for him; but this means of livelihood was impaired by the loss of his teeth, which he sold one night for ten shillings and a sufficiency of liquor to some merry London Hospital students. He died in 1797 when Lamb was twenty-two.