deacon Hessey. He was at
the Merchant Taylors' School, where it was a custom to compose Latin
and English epigrams for speech day, the boys being permitted to get
help. Archdeacon Hessey wrote as follows in the Taylorian a few
years ago:--

The subjects for 1830 were _Suum Cuique_ and _Brevis esse laboro_.
After some three or four exercise nights I confess that I was
literally "at my wits' end." But a brilliant idea struck me. I had
frequently, boy as I was, seen Charles Lamb at my father's house,
and once, in 1825 or 1826, I had been taken to have tea with him and
his sister, Mary Lamb, at their little house, Colebrook Cottage, a
whitish-brown tenement, standing by itself, close to the New River,
at Islington. He was very kind, as he always was to young people,
and very quaint. I told him that I had devoured his "Roast Pig"; he
congratulated me on possessing a thorough schoolboy's appetite. And
he was pleased when I mentioned my having seen the boys at Christ's
Hospital at their public suppers, which then took place on the
Sunday evenings in Lent. "Could this good-natured and humorous old
gentleman be prevailed upon to give me an Epigram?" "I don't know,"
said my father, to whom I put the question, "but I will ask him at
any rate, and send him the mottoes." In a day or two there arrived
from Enfield, to which Lamb had removed some time in 1827, not one,
but two epigrams, one on each subject. That on _Suum Cuique_ was in
Latin, and was suggested by the grim satisfaction which had recently
been expressed by the public at the capture and execution of some
notorious highwayman.

See also Vol. IV. of this edition for a slightly differing version. Lamb
had many years before, he says in a letter to Godwin, written similar
epigrams.

"With one exception." Perhaps the Latin verses on Haydon's picture. See
Vol. IV.]

LETTER 515

CHARLES LAMB TO EDWARD MOXON

Enfield, Tuesday. [P.M. May 12, 1830.]

Dear M. I dined with your and my Rogers at Mr. Gary's yesterday. Gary
consulted me on the proper bookseller to offer a Lady's MS novel to. I
said I would write to you. But I wish you would call on the Translator
of Dante at the British Museum, and talk with him. He is the pleasantest
of clergymen. I told him of all Rogers's handsome behaviour to you, and
you are already no stranger. Go. I made Rogers laugh about your
Nighti