nd night winds
Lull thee to slumber!"

Page 115. _To Sir James Mackintosh._

In a letter to Manning in August, 1801, Lamb quotes this epigram as
having been printed in _The Albion_ and caused that paper's death the
previous week. In his _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers," written thirty years
later, he stated that the epigram was written at the time of
Mackintosh's departure for India to reap the fruits of his apostasy; but
here Lamb's memory deceived him, for Mackintosh was not appointed
Recorder of Bombay until 1803 and did not sail until 1804, whereas there
is reason to believe the date of Lamb's letter to Manning of August,
1801, to be accurate. The epigram must then have referred to a rumour of
some earlier appointment, for Mackintosh had been hoping for something
for several years.

Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), the lawyer and philosopher, had in
1791 issued his _Vindicia Galliae_, a reply to Burke's _Reflections on
the French Revolution_. Later, however, he became one of Burke's friends
and an opponent of the Revolution, and in 1798 he issued his
Introductory Discourse to his lectures on "The Law of Nature and
Nations," in which the doctrines of his _Vindiciae Gallicae_ were
repudiated. Hence his "apostasy." Mackintosh applied unsuccessfully for
a judgeship in Trinidad, and for the post of Advocate-General in Bengal,
and Lord Wellesley had invited him to become the head of a college in
Calcutta. Rumour may have credited him with any of these posts and thus
have suggested Lamb's epigram. In 1803 he was appointed Recorder of
Bombay. Lamb's dislike of Mackintosh may have been due in some measure
to Coleridge, between whom and Mackintosh a mild feud subsisted. It had
been Mackintosh, however, brother-in-law of Daniel Stuart of the
_Morning Post_, who introduced Coleridge to that paper. (See notes to
Vol. II., where further particulars of _The Albion_, edited by Lamb's
friend, John Fenwick, will be found.)

Lamb may or may not have invented the sarcasm in this epigram; but it
was not new. In Mrs. Montagu's letters, some years before, we find
something of the kind concerning Charles James Fox: "His rapid journeys
to England, on the news of the king's illness, have brought on him a
violent complaint in the bowels, which will, it is imagined, prove
mortal. However, if it should, it will vindicate his character from the
general report that he has no bowels, as has been most strenuously
asserted by his creditors."