Page 37, line 1 of essay. "A clean hearth." To this, in the London
Magazine, Lamb put the footnote:—
"This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You must remember the intolerable crash of the unswept cinder, betwixt your foot and the marble."
Page 37, line 8 of essay. Win one game, and lose another. To this, in the London Magazine, Lamb put the note:—
"As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day,
and lose him the next."
Page 38, line 26. Mr. Bowles. The Rev. William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), whose sonnets had so influenced Coleridge's early poetical career. His edition of Pope was published in 1806. I have tried in vain to discover if Mr. Bowles' MS. and notes for this edition are still in existence. If so, they might contain Lamb's contribution. But it is rather more likely, I fear, that Lamb invented the story. The game of ombre is in Canto III. of The Rape of the Lock.
The only writing on cards which we know Lamb to have done, apart from this essay, is the elementary rules of whist which he made out for Mrs. Badams quite late in his life as a kind of introduction to the reading of Admiral Burney's treatise. This letter is in America and has never been printed except privately; nor, if its owner can help it, will it.
Page 40, line 26. Old Walter Plumer. See the essay on "The South-Sea
House."
Page 42, line 18 from foot. Bad passions. Here came in the London Magazine, in parenthesis, "(dropping for a while the speaking mask of old Sarah Battle)."
Page 43, line 2. Bridget Elia. This is Lamb's first reference in the essays to Mary Lamb under this name. See "Mackery End" and "Old China."
A little essay on card playing in the Every-Day Book, the authorship of which is unknown, but which may be Hone's, ends with the following pleasant passage:—