N——‘s. Northcote’s.

H—y—dn’s. Haydon’s.

A Doctor Tronchin. Theodore Tronchin (1709–1781), Genevan physician and friend of Rousseau.

Sir Fopling Flutter. In Sir George Etherege’s comedy The Man of Mode.

For wit is like a rest. Master Francis Beaumont’s Letter to Ben Jonson, printed in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Comedies (1647) [the best gamesters].

L—— once came down. To Winterslow. See Vol. VI. Table Talk, notes to pp. 90 and 188.

Like the most capricious poet [honest] Ovid. As You Like It, III. 3.

Walked gowned. Lamb’s Sonnet, written at Cambridge, August 15, 1819.

The person I mean. Undoubtedly George Dyer. See Lamb’s description of him in ‘Oxford in the Vacation’ (Essays of Elia).

ESSAY V. ON REASON AND IMAGINATION