Lamb copied them, but there are certain
differences noted in my large edition.

Page 247, middle. _Which I have ... heard objected_. A criticism of
Hazlitt's, in his sixth lecture on Elizabethan literature, delivered
in 1820 at the Surrey Institution, is here criticised. Hazlitt's
remarks on Sidney were uniformly slighting. "His sonnets inlaid in the
Arcadia are jejune, far-fetch'd and frigid.... [The _Arcadia_] is to
me one of the greatest monuments of the abuse of intellectual power
upon record.... [Sidney is] a complete intellectual coxcomb, or nearly
so;" and so forth. The lectures were published in 1821. Elsewhere,
however, Hazlitt found in Sidney much to praise.

Page 248, line 3. _Thin diet of dainty words_. To this sentence, in
the _London Magazine_, Lamb put the following footnote:--

"A profusion of verbal dainties, with a disproportionate lack of
matter and circumstance, is I think one reason of the coldness
with which the public has received the poetry of a nobleman now
living; which, upon the score of exquisite diction alone, is
entitled to something better than neglect. I will venture to copy
one of his Sonnets in this place, which for quiet sweetness, and
unaffected morality, has scarcely its parallel in our language.

"TO A BIRD THAT HAUNTED THE WATERS OF LACKEN IN THE WINTER

"_By Lord Thurlow_

"O melancholy Bird, a winter's day,
Thou standest by the margin of the pool,
And, taught by God, dost thy whole being school
To Patience, which all evil can allay.
God has appointed thee the Fish thy prey;
And given thyself a lesson to the Fool
Unthrifty, to submit to moral rule,
And his unthinking course by thee to weigh.
There need not schools, nor the Professor's chair,
Though these be good, true wisdom to impart.
He who has not enough, for these, to spare
Of time, or gold, may yet amend his heart,
And teach his soul, by brooks, and rivers fair:
Nature is always wise in every part."

This sonnet, by Edward Hovell-Thurlow, second Baron Thurlow
(1781-1829), an intense devotee of Sir Philip Sidney's muse, was a
special favourite with Lamb. He copied it into his Commonplace Book,
and De Quincey has described, in his "London Reminiscences," how Lamb
used to read it aloud.

Page 248, line 27. _Epitaph made on him_. After these words, in the
_London Magazine_, came "by Lord Brooke.