ut 1790. Lamb must have
written Merchant Taylors' epigrams before, for in 1803, in a letter to
Godwin about writing to order, he speaks of having undertaken, three or
four times, a schoolboy copy of verses for Merchant Taylors' boys at a
guinea a copy, and refers to the trouble and vexation the work was to
him.

Writing to Southey on May 10, 1830, Lamb said, at the end:--"Perhaps
an epigram (not a very happy-gram) I did for a school-boy yesterday may
amuse. I pray Jove he may not get a flogging for any false quantity; but
'tis, with one exception, the only Latin verses I have made for forty
years, and I did it 'to order.'

"CUIQUE SUUM

"Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas
Fur, rapiens, spolians quod mihi, quod-que tibi,
Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, meum-que tuum-que
Omne suum est: tandem Cui-que Suum tribuit.
Dat resti collum; restes, vah! carnifici dat;
Sese Diabolo, sic bene; Cuique Suum."

Page 123. _On "The Literary Gazette"_.

_The Examiner_, August 22, 1830. This epigram, consisting only of the
first four lines, slightly altered, and headed "Rejected Epigrams,
6"-evidently torn from a paper containing a number of verses (the figure
7 is just visible underneath it)--is in the British Museum among the
letters left by Vincent Novello. It is inscribed, "In handwriting of Mr.
Charles Lamb." The same collection contains a copy, in Mrs. Cowden
Clarke's handwriting, of the sonnet to Mrs. Jane Towers (see page 50).
_The Literary Gazette_ was William Jerdan's paper, a poor thing, which
Lamb had reason to dislike for the attack it made upon him when _Album
Verses_ was published (see note on page 331).

_The Examiner_ began the attack on August 14, 1830. All the epigrams are
signed T.A. This means that if Lamb wrote the above, he wrote all; which
is not, I think, likely. I do not reproduce them, the humour of punning
upon the name of the editor of the _Literary Gazette_ being a little
outmoded.

T.A. may, of course, have been Lamb's pseudonymous signature. If so, he
may have chosen it as a joke upon his friend Thomas Allsop. But since
one of the epigrams is addressed to himself I doubt if Lamb was the
author.

Page 123. _On the Fast-Day_.

John Payne Collier, in his privately printed reminiscences, _An Old
Man's Diary_, quotes this epigram as being by Charles Lamb. It may have
been written for the Fast-Day on October 19, 1803, for that