Butler's simile, in Hudibras, runs:—
The sun had long since in the lap
Of Thetis taken out his nap,
And, like a lobster boiled, the morn
From black to red began to turn.
Charles Dibdin the younger (1768-1853) was the author of a number of plays and songs and also of a History of the London Theatres, 1826. The full title of the Comic Tales was Comic Tales and Lyrical Fancies; including The Chessiad, a mock-heroic, in five cantos; and The Wreath of Love, in four cantos, 1825.
The adaptation from Milton in the first sentence is very Elian. See Paradise Lost, VII., 21-23.
Half yet remains unsung, but narrower bound
Within the visible diurnal spheare,
Standing on earth, not rapt above the Pole.
[Page 430,] line 13. Hoyle ... Phillidor. Meaning more at home in whist than in chess. From Edmond Hoyle (1672-1769), author of A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist, 1742, and François André Philidor (1726-1795), the composer and an authority upon chess. Lamb was, of course, a great whist player.
[Page 430,] line 16. Swift and Gay. Swift wrote a short but admirably observant city poem, "A Description of the Morning." Gay's Trivia; or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London, would be the work in Lamb's mind.
[Page 430.] Dog Days.
Every-Day Book, July 14, 1825.