Page 102, line 22. Jackson. This was Richard Jackson, some time M.P. for New Romney, to whom Johnson, Boswell tells us, refused the epithet "Omniscient" as blasphemous, changing it to "all knowing." He was made a Bencher in 1770 and died in 1787.
Page 102, foot. Mingay. James Mingay, who was made a Bencher in 1785, died in 1812. He was M.P. for Thetford and senior King's Counsel. He was also Recorder of Aldborough, Crabbe's town. He lived at 4 King's Bench Walk.
Page 103, line 1. Baron Maseres. This was Francis Maseres (1731-1824), mathematician, reformer and Cursiter Baron of the Exchequer. He lived at 5 King's Bench Walk, and at Reigate, and wore a three-cornered hat and ruffles to the end. In April, 1801, Lamb wrote to Manning:—"I live at No. 16 Mitre-court Buildings, a pistol-shot off Baron Maseres'. You must introduce me to the Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the Baron and me together."
Baron Maseres, who was made a Bencher in 1774, died in 1824.
Page 104, line 13. Hookers and Seldens. Richard Hooker (1554?-1600), the "judicious," was Master of the Temple. John Selden (1584-1654), the jurist, who lived in Paper Buildings and practised law in the Temple, was buried in the Temple Church with much pomp.
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Page 104. GRACE BEFORE MEAT.
London Magazine, November, 1821.
This was the essay, Lamb suggested, which Southey may have had in mind when in an article in the Quarterly Review he condemned Elia as wanting "a sounder religious feeling." In his "Letter to Southey" (Vol. I.), which contained Lamb's protest against Southey's strictures, he wrote:—"I am at a loss what particular essay you had in view (if my poor ramblings amount to that appellation) when you were in such a hurry to thrust in your objection, like bad news, foremost.—Perhaps the Paper on 'Saying Graces' was the obnoxious feature. I have endeavoured there to rescue a voluntary duty—good in place, but never, as I remember, literally commanded—from the charge of an undecent formality. Rightly taken, sir, that paper was not against graces, but want of grace; not against the ceremony, but the carelessness and slovenliness so often observed in the performance of it."
Page 108, line 12 from foot. C——. Coleridge; but Lamb may really have said it.