Cousin Bridget and the gentle Elia seem beings of that age wherein lived Pamela, whom, with "old Sarah Battle," we may imagine entering their room, and sitting down with them to a square game. Yet Bridget and Elia live in our own times: she, full of kindness to all, and of soothings to Elia especially;—he, no less kind and consoling to Bridget, in all simplicity holding converse with the world, and, ever and anon, giving us scenes that Metzu and De Foe would admire, and portraits that Deuner and Hogarth would rise from their graves to paint.
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Page 43. A CHAPTER ON EARS.
London Magazine, March, 1821.
Lamb was not so utterly without ear as he states. Crabb Robinson in his diary records more than once that Lamb hummed tunes, and Barron Field, in the memoir of Lamb contributed by him to the Annual Biography and Obituary for 1836, mentions his love for certain beautiful airs, among them Kent's "O that I had wings like a dove" (mentioned in this essay), and Handel's "From mighty kings." Lamb says that it was Braham who awakened a love of music in him. Compare Lamb's lines to Clara Novello, Vol. IV., page 101, and also Mary Lamb's postscript to his "Free Thoughts on Eminent Composers," same volume.
Page 43, foot. I was never … in the pillory. This sentence led to an amusing article in the London Magazine for the next month, April, 1821, entitled "The Confessions of H.F.V.H. Delamore, Esq.," unmistakably, I think, by Lamb, which will be found in Vol. I. of this edition, wherein Lamb confesses to a brief sojourn in the stocks at Barnet for brawling on Sunday, an incident for the broad truth of which we have the testimony of his friend Brook Pulham.
Page 44, lines 6 and 7. "Water parted from the sea," "In Infancy."
Songs by Arne in "Artaxerxes," Lamb's "First Play" (see page 113).
Page 44, line 11. Mrs. S——. The Key gives "Mrs. Spinkes." We meet a Will Weatherall in "Distant Correspondents," page 120; but I have not been able to discover more concerning either.
Page 44, line 17. Alice W——n. See note to "Dream Children."
Page 44, line 26. My friend A. Probably William Ayrton (1777-1818), the musical critic, one of the Burneys' whist-playing set, and a friend and correspondent of Lamb's. See the musical rhyming letter to him from Lamb, May 17, 1817.