e Diurnals I generally skip the Foreign News,
the Debates--and the Politics--I find the Morning Herald by far
the most entertaining of them. It is an agreeable miscellany,
rather than a newspaper."

The _Morning Herald_, under Alexander Chalmers, had given more
attention to social gossip than to affairs of State; but under Thomas
Wright it suddenly, about the time of Lamb's essay, became politically
serious and left aristocratic matters to the _Morning Post_.

Page 199, line 20. _Town and Country Magazine_. This magazine
flourished between 1769 and 1792.

Page 199, line 26. _Poor Tobin_. Possibly John Tobin (1770-1804), the
playwright, though I think not. More probably the Tobin mentioned in
Lamb's letter to Wordsworth about "Mr. H." in June, 1806 (two years
after John Tobin's death), to whom Lamb read the manager's letter
concerning the farce. This would be James, John Tobin's brother.

Page 200, line 13. _The five points_. After these words came, in the
_London Magazine_, the following paragraph:--

"I was once amused--there is a pleasure in _affecting_
affectation--at the indignation of a crowd that was justling in
with me at the pit-door of Covent Garden theatre, to have a sight
of Master Betty--then at once in his dawn and his meridian--in
Hamlet. I had been invited quite unexpectedly to join a party,
whom I met near the door of the playhouse, and I happened to have
in my hand a large octavo of Johnson and Steevens's Shakspeare,
which, the time not admitting of my carrying it home, of course
went with me to the theatre. Just in the very heat and pressure
of the doors opening--the _rush_, as they term it--I deliberately
held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which the young
Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly read by the lamplight.
The clamour became universal. 'The affectation of the fellow,'
cried one. 'Look at that gentleman _reading_, papa,' squeaked a
young lady, who in her admiration of the novelty almost forgot her
fears. I read on. 'He ought to have his book knocked out of his
hand,' exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms were too fast pinioned to
his side to suffer him to execute his kind intention. Still I read
on--and, till the time came to pay my money, kept as unmoved,
as Saint Antony at his Holy Offices, with the satyrs, apes, and
hobgoblins, mopping, and making mouths at him, in the pict