Page 47, line 5. My friend, Nov——. Vincent Novello (1781-1861), the organist, the father of Mrs. Cowden Clarke, and a great friend of Lamb.
Page 47, footnote. Another friend of Vincent Novello's uses the same couplet (from Watt's Divine Songs for Children, Song XXVIII., "For the Lord's Day, Evening") in the description of glees by the old cricketers at the Bat and Ball on Broad Halfpenny Down, near Hambledon—I refer to John Nyren, author of The Young Cricketer's Tutor, 1833. There is no evidence that Lamb and Nyren ever met, but one feels that they ought to have done so, in Novello's hospitable rooms.
Page 48, line 3. Lutheran beer. Edmund Ollier, the son of Charles Ollier, the publisher of Lamb's Works, 1818, in his reminiscences of Lamb, prefixed to one edition of Elia, tells this story: "Once at a musical party at Leigh Hunt's, being oppressed with what to him was nothing but a prolonged noise … he said—'If one only had a pot of porter, one might get through this.' It was procured for him and he weathered the Mozartian storm."
In the London Magazine this essay had the following postscript:—
"P.S.—A writer, whose real name, it seems, is Boldero, but who has been entertaining the town for the last twelve months, with some very pleasant lucubrations, under the assumed signature of Leigh Hunt[1], in his Indicator, of the 31st January last, has thought fit to insinuate, that I Elia do not write the little sketches which bear my signature, in this Magazine; but that the true author of them is a Mr. L——b. Observe the critical period at which he has chosen to impute the calumny!—on the very eve of the publication of our last number—affording no scope for explanation for a full month—during which time, I must needs lie writhing and tossing, under the cruel imputation of nonentity.—Good heavens! that a plain man must not be allowed to be—
"They call this an age of personality: but surely this spirit of
anti-personality (if I may so express it) is something worse.
"Take away my moral reputation: I may live to discredit that
calumny.
"Injure my literary fame,—I may write that up again—
"But when a gentleman is robbed of his identity, where is he?
"Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail and perishing trifle at the best. But here is an assassin who aims at our very essence; who not only forbids us to be any longer, but to have been at all. Let our ancestors look to it—