I never witness'd to a Prologue. It was attempted to be encored. How
hard! a thing I did merely as a task, because it was wanted--and set no
great store by; and Mr. H.!! The quantity of friends we had in the house
my brother and I being in Public Offices &c. was astonishing--but they
yielded at length to a few hisses--"a hundred hisses--damn the word, I
write it like kisses--how different--a hundred hisses outweigh 1000
claps. The former come more directly from the Heart. Well, 'tis
withdrawn and there is an end. Better Luck to us."

Writing to Sarah Stoddart, Lamb put the case thus:--"Mary is a little
cut at the ill success of 'Mr. H.,' which came out last night, and
_failed_. I know you'll be sorry, but never mind. We are determined not
to be cast down. I am going to leave off tobacco, and then we must
thrive. A smoking man must write smoky farces." Thereafter Lamb's
attitude to "Mr. H----" was always one of humorous resignation.

Lamb should have chosen a better, by which I mean a worse,
name than Hogsflesh. As a matter of fact a great number of
persons had become quite accustomed to the asperities of Hogsflesh,
not only from the famous cricketer of that name, one of the pioneers
of the game, but also from the innkeeper at Worthing. Indeed an
old rhyme current at the end of the eighteenth century anticipated
some of Lamb's humour, for the two principal landlords of Worthing,
which was just then beginning to be a fashionable resort, were
named Hogsflesh and Bacon, leading to the quatrain:--

Brighton is a pretty street,
Worthing is much taken;
If you can't get any other meat
There's Hogsflesh and Bacon.

The Drury Lane authorities do not seem to have considered the failure as
absolute as did Lamb, for on the next day--December 11--the bills
announced:--

*** The New Farce of Mr. H----, performed for the first time last
night, was received by an overflowing audience with universal applause,
and will be repeated for the second time to-morrow.

But the next evening's bill--December 12, 1806--stated that "The New
Farce of Mr. H---- is withdrawn at the request of the author."

"Mr. H----" did not then disappear altogether from the stage. A
correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, May 26, 1855, remembered seeing it
at Philadelphia when he was a boy. The last scene, he says, particularly
amused the audience. And in William B. Wood's _Personal Recollections of
the Stage_, 1855, it i