"SIXPENNY JOKES"
[Sidenote: Charles Lamb]
There is no virtue like necessity, says the proverb. If that be true, what a quantity of virtue there must be among the lower orders of people in this country!
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A bench of Justices certainly gives us an idea of something wooden. Shakespeare, in his Seven Ages, represents a Justice as made up with saws.
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Locke compares the mind of a new-born infant to a sheet of white paper not yet written on. It must be confessed that, whoever wrote upon Mr. A——n's mind has left large margins.
TO HIS BROTHER
[Sidenote: Keats]
The thought of your little girl puts me in mind of a thing I heard Mr.
Lamb say. A child in arms was passing by his chair towards the mother in
the nurse's arms. Lamb took hold of the long-clothes, saying, "Where,
God bless me, where does it leave off?"
LAMB'S TASK
[Sidenote: Charles Lamb]
In those days every morning paper, as an essential retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who was bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke—and it was thought pretty high too—was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these cases. The chat of the day, scandal, but, above all, dress, furnished the material. The length of no paragraph was to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might be, but they must be poignant.