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Page 115. POLITICAL AND OTHER EPIGRAMS.

Lamb was not a politician, but he had strong--almost
passionate--prejudices against certain statesmen and higher persons,
which impelled him now and then to sarcastic verse. The earliest
examples in this vein that can be identified are two quatrains from the
_Morning Post_ in January, 1802, printed on page 115, and the epigram
on Sir James Mackintosh in _The Albion_, printed on the same page, to
which Lamb refers in the _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers Thirty-five Years
Ago" (see Vol. II.). Until a file of _The Albion_ turns up we shall
never know how active Lamb's pen was at that time. The next belong to
the year 1812--in _The Examiner_ (see page 116)--and we then leap
another seven years or so until 1819-1820, Lamb's busiest period as a
caustic critic of affairs--in _The Examiner_, possibly the _Morning
Chronicle_, and principally in _The Champion_. After 1820, however, he
returned to this vein very seldom, and then with less bitterness and
depth of feeling. "The Royal Wonders," in _The Times_ for August 10,
1830 (see page 122), and "Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross,"
in the _Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831 (written, however, some
years earlier), on page 121, being his latest efforts that we know of.
Of course there must be many other similar productions to which we have
no clue--the old _Morning Post_ days doubtless saw many an epigram that
cannot now be definitely claimed for Lamb--but those that are preserved
here sufficiently show how feelingly Lamb could hate and how trenchantly
he could chastise. Others that seem to me likely to be Lamb's I could
have included; but it is well to dispense as much as possible with the
problematic. For example, I suspect Lamb of the authorship of several of
the epigrams quoted in _The Examiner_ in 1819 and 1820 from the _Morning
Chronicle_. He used to send verses to the _Morning Chronicle_ at that
time, and Leigh Hunt, the editor of _The Examiner_, would naturally be
pleased to give anything of his friend's an additional publicity.

The majority of the epigrams printed in this section might have remained
unidentified were it not that in 1822 John Thelwall, who owned and
edited _The Champion_ in 1818-1820, issued a little volume entitled _The
Poetical Recreations of "The Champion,"_ wherein Lamb's contributions
were signed R. et R. This signature being appended to certain poems of
w