SOUTHEY.
This was, I think, Southey's first public utterance concerning Lamb since Lamb's famous open letter to him of October, 1823 (see Vol. I.).
Lamb wrote to Bernard Barton in the same month: "How noble … in R.S. to come forward for an old friend who had treated him so unworthily," For the critics, Lamb said in the same letter, he did not care the "five hundred thousandth part of a half-farthing;" and we can believe him. On page 123 will be found, however, an epigram on the Literary Gazette.
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ALBUM VERSES
Page 46. In the Album of a Clergyman's Lady.
This lady was probably Mrs. Williams, of Fornham, in Suffolk, in whose house Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma Isola, lived as a governess in 1829-1830. The epitaph on page 65 and the acrostic on page 107 were written for the same lady.
Page 46. In the Autograph Book of Mrs. Sergeant W——.
Mrs. Sergeant Wilde, née Wileman, was the first wife of Thomas Wilde,
afterwards Lord Truro (1782-1855), for whose election at Newark in 1831
Lamb is said to have written facetious verses (see my large edition).
The Wildes were Lamb's neighbours at Enfield.
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