printed in Hone's _Table Book_, 1827, signed Elia, under the title
"Gone or Going." It was there longer, after stanza 6 coming the
following:--

Had he mended in right time,
He need not in night time,
(That black hour, and fright-time,)
Till sexton interr'd him,
Have groan'd in his coffin,
While demons stood scoffing--
You'd ha' thought him a-coughing--
My own father[28] heard him!

Could gain so importune,
With occasion opportune,
That for a poor Fortune,
That should have been ours[29],
In soul he should venture
To pierce the dim center,
Where will-forgers enter Amid the dark Powers?--

And in the _Table Book_ the last stanza ended thus:--

And flaunting Miss Waller--
_That_ soon must befal her,
Which makes folks seem taller[30],--
Though proud, once, as Juno!

[Footnote 28: Who sat up with him.]

[Footnote 29: I have this fact from Parental tradition only.]

[Footnote 30: Death lengthens people to the eye.]

To annotate this curious tale of old friendships, dating back, as I
suppose, in some cases to Lamb's earliest memories, both of London and
Hertfordshire, is a task that is probably beyond completion. The day is
too distant. But a search in the Widford register and churchyard reveals
a little information and oral tradition a little more.

Stanza 2. _Rich Kitty Wheatley_. The Rev. Joseph Whately, vicar of
Widford in the latter half of the eighteenth century, married Jane
Plumer, sister of William Plumer, of Blakesware, the employer of Mrs.
Field, Lamb's grandmother. Archbishop Whately was their son. Kitty
Wheatley may have been a relative.

Stanza 2. _Polly Perkin_. On June 1, 1770, according to the Widford
register, Samuel Perkins married Mary Lanham. This may have been Polly.

Stanza 3. _Carter ... Lily_. The late Mrs. Tween, a daughter of Randal
Norris, Lamb's friend, and a resident in Widford, told Canon Ainger that
Carter and Lily were servants at Blakesware. Lily had noticeably red
cheeks. Lamb would have seen them often when he stayed there as a boy.
In Cussan's _Hertfordshire_ is an entertaining account of William
Plumer's widow's adhesion to the old custom of taking the air. She rode
out always--from Gilston, only a few miles from Widford and
Blakesware--in the family chariot, with outriders and postilion (a
successor to Lily), and so vast was the equipage that "