still continues. See p. [224] and n.
ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS
This is the title of Essays III and IV of the “Plain Speaker.” Our selection begins with the last paragraph of the first, which forms a fitting introduction to the account of one of Lamb’s celebrated Wednesday evenings. Lamb tells us that his sister was accustomed to read this essay with unmixed delight.
[P. 301.] When Greek meets Greek. Nathaniel Lee’s “Alexander the Great,” iv, 2.
C——. Coleridge.
[P. 302.] small-coal man. Thomas Britton (1654?-1714), a dealer in small coal, who on the floor of his hut above the coal-shop held weekly concerts of vocal and instrumental music, at which the greatest performers of the day, even Handel, were to be heard.
And, in our flowing cups. Cf. “Henry V,” iv, 3, 51:
“then shall our names
Familiar in his mouth as household words ...
Be in their flowing cups freely remember’d.”
[P. 303.] the cartoons. See Hazlitt’s account of Raphael’s cartoons in “The Pictures at Hampton Court” (Works, IX, 43).
Donne, John (1573-1631), poet and divine. Hazlitt in the “Lectures on the English Poets” confesses that he knows nothing of him save “some beautiful verses to his wife, dissuading her from accompanying him on his travels abroad (see p. [318]), and some quaint riddles in verse, which the Sphinx could not unravel.” V, 83.