[P. 304.] Ned P——. Edward Phillips. Lamb speaks of him as “that poor card-playing Phillips, that has felt himself for so many years the outcast of Fortune.” (Works, ed. Lucas, VII, 972.)
Captain ——. Rear-Admiral James Burney (1750-1821), brother of Fanny Burney the novelist, author of a “Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean” in five volumes (1803-1817). “The captain was himself a character, a fine, noble creature—gentle, with a rough exterior, as became the associate of Captain Cook in his voyages round the world, and the literary historian of all these acts of circumnavigation.” Crabb-Robinson’s Diary, 1810.
Jem White. James White (1775-1820), of whom Lamb has left us a sketch in the essay “On the Praise of Chimney-Sweepers”: “He carried away half the fun of the world when he died.” He wrote, it is supposed with some cooperation from Lamb, the “Original Letters, etc., of Sir John Falstaff and his Friends” (1796), which were described by Lamb as “without exception the best imitations I ever saw.” (Works, ed. Lucas, VI, 2.) A review of this book by Lamb, consisting chiefly of specimens, appeared in the Examiner in 1819 (Works, ed. Lucas, I, 191 ff).
turning like the latter end. This phrase occurs in one of the extracts in Lamb’s review of Falstaff’s Letters just mentioned (p. 194).
A——. William Aryton (1777-1858), a musical critic and director of the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket. In the letter of Elia to Robert Southey (Lamb’s Works, I, 230) he is spoken of as “the last and steadiest left me of that little knot of whist-players, that used to assemble weekly, for so many years, at the Queen’s Gate.”
Mrs. R——-. Mrs. Reynolds, who had been Lamb’s schoolmistress.
M. B. Martin Charles Burney, son of Admiral Burney. “Martin Burney is as odd as ever.... He came down here, and insisted on reading Virgil’s ‘Æneid’ all through with me (which he did,) because a Counsel must know Latin. Another time he read out all the Gospel of St. John, because Biblical quotations are very emphatic in a Court of Justice. A third time, he would carve a fowl, which he did very ill-favoredly, because ‘we did not know how indispensable it was for a Barrister to do all those sort of things well. Those little things were of more consequence than we supposed.’ So he goes on, harassing about the way to prosperity, and losing it. With a long head, but somewhat wrong one—harum-scarum. Why does not his guardian angel look to him? He deserves one—: may be, he has tired him out.” Lamb’s Works, VII, 855.
Author of the Road to Ruin. Thomas Holcroft.
[P. 305.] Critique of Pure Reason, by Kant.
Biographia Literaria. Coleridge’s account of his literary life, published in 1817.