" Referring to the crowds that listened to Irving.

"Peter Fin." A character in Jones' "Peter Finn's Trip to Brighton,"
1822, as played by Liston.

"Tommy Hill." In the British Museum is preserved the following brief
note addressed to Mr. Thomas Hill--probably the same. The date is
between 1809 and 1817:--]

LETTER 397

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS HILL

D'r Sir It is necessary _I see you sign_, can you step up to me 4 Inner
Temple Lane this evening. I shall wait at home.

Yours,

C. LAMB.

[I have no notion to what the note refers. It is quite likely, Mr. J.A.
Rutter suggests, that Hill the drysalter, a famous busy-body, and a
friend of Theodore Hook, stood for the portrait of Tom Pry in Lamb's
"Lepus Papers" (see Vol. I.). S.C. Hall, in his _Book of Memories_, says
of Hill that "his peculiar faculty was to find out what everybody did,
from a minister of state to a stableboy."]

LETTER 398

CHARLES LAMB TO JOHN BATES DIBDIN

[P.M. July 14, 1826.]

Because you boast poetic Grandsire,
And rhyming kin, both Uncle and Sire,
Dost think that none but _their_ Descendings
Can tickle folks with double endings?
I had a Dad, that would for half a bet
Have put down thine thro' half the Alphabet.
Thou, who would be Dan Prior the second,
For Dan Posterior must be reckon'd.
In faith, dear Tim, your rhymes are slovenly,
As a man may say, dough-baked and ovenly;
Tedious and long as two Long Acres,
And smell most vilely of the Baker's.
(I have been cursing every limb o' thee,
Because I could not hitch in _Timothy_.
Jack, Will, Tom, Dick's, a serious evil,
But Tim, plain Tim's--the very devil.)
Thou most incorrigible scribbler,
Right Watering place and cockney dribbler,
What _child_, that barely understands _A,
B, C_, would ever dream that Stanza
Would tinkle into rhyme with "Plan, Sir"?
Go, go, you are not worth an answer.
I had a Sire, that at plain Crambo
Had hit you o'er the pate a damn'd blow.
How now? may I die game, and you die brass,
But I have stol'n a quip from Hudibras.
'Twas thinking on that fine old Suttler, }
That was in faith a second Butler; }
Mad as queer rhymes as he, and subtler. }
He would have put you to 't this weather
For rattling syll