London Magazine, December, 1822. Not signed.
In December, 1822, the editor of the London Magazine inaugurated a new department to be called "The Miscellany"—a place of refuge for small ingenious productions. To ask Lamb's assistance would be the most natural thing in the world, and though no signature is attached, there is, I think, enough internal evidence for us to consider his the contribution to the first instalment which has the sub-title, "Scraps of Criticism."
The first two notes, on Gray, may be taken as companions to that in The Examiner Table-Talk ([page 181]), on the beard of Gray's Bard. The note on Richard III. is of a part with Lamb's Shakespearian criticisms, and it comes here as a kind of postscript to his examination of Cooke's impersonation (see [page 41] and note to the same).
[Page 425,] second quotation. This passage describing Milton is in Gray's Progress of Poesy, III., 2, and not, as Lamb inadvertently says, in The Bard.
[Page 425,] foot. Salmasius. Salmasius, Claude de Saumaise (1588-1653), a professor at Leyden who wrote a defence of Charles I. in Latin, 1649, to which Milton replied, 1650, also in Latin. It was while engaged in this work that Milton lost his sight.
[Page 426,] second paragraph. Howell's Letters. Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ: Familiar Letters, Domestic and Foreign, divided into Sundry Sections, partly Historical, Political and Philosophical, 1645-1655. By James Howell (1594?-1666). It was James Russell Lowell's theory (shared by other critics) that Lamb borrowed the name Elia from Ho-Elianæ. But this was not the case. The letter referred to in line 22 is to Captain Thomas Porter, July 10, 1623; and the fourth letter from which Lamb quotes is to Sir James Crofts, August 21, 1623. I have restored Howell's capitals. The italics are Lamb's.
[Page 427,] at the end. The Salutation. Lamb was probably wrong in this theory. According to Larwood and Hotten's History of Signboards, 1867, the sign originally represented an angel saluting the Virgin Mary. In the time of the Commonwealth this was changed to a soldier saluting a civilian; and later it became the salutation of two citizens: the form of the old sign of the Salutation in Newgate Street, where Coleridge lived a while, and where Lamb and he talked into the night over egg-hot. Ben Jonson's Salutation, referred to in "Bartholomew Fair," was in Billingsgate. Salutation and Cat was a blend of two signs.
[Page 427.] The Choice of a Grave. London Magazine, January, 1823. Not signed.
There is a passage in the Elia essay on "Distant Correspondents," concerning Lord Camelford's fantastic instructions concerning the burial of his body, which bears upon this same subject.