now in my possession, with Mary Lamb's name in it.

* * * * *

Page 266. REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE.

_London Magazine_, January, 1823.

This paper, being printed in the same number as that which announced
Elia's death, was signed "Elia's Ghost."

Lamb returned to this vein of fancy two years or so later when (in
1825) he contributed to his friend William Hone's _Every-Day Book_
the petition of the Twenty-Ninth of February, a day of which Hone had
taken no account, and of the Twelfth of August, which from being kept
as the birthday of King George IV. during the time that he was Prince
of Wales, was, on his accession to the throne, disregarded in favour
of April 23, St. George's Day. For these letters see Vol. I. of this
edition.

Page 271, line 15. "_On the bat's back ..._" From Ariel's song in
"The Tempest." Lamb confesses, in at least two of his letters, to a
precisely similar plight.

* * * * *

Page 271. THE WEDDING.

_London Magazine_, June, 1825.

The wedding was that of Sarah Burney, daughter of Lamb's old friends,
Rear-Admiral James Burney and his wife Sarah Burney, to her cousin,
John Payne, of Pall Mall, at St. Margaret's, Westminster, in April,
1821. The clergyman was the Rev. C.P. Burney, who was not, however,
vicar of St. Mildred's in the Poultry, but of St. Paul's, Deptford, in
Kent. Admiral Burney lived only six months longer, dying in November.

Canon Ainger pointed out that when Lamb was revising this essay for
its appearance in the _Last Essays of Elia_, he was, like the admiral,
about to lose by marriage Emma Isola, who was to him and his sister
what Miss Burney had been to her parents. She married Edward Moxon in
July, 1833.

Page 274, line 8. _An unseasonable disposition to levity_. Writing to
P.G. Patmore in 1827 Lamb says: "I have been to a funeral, where I
made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of the mourners." Again,
writing to Southey: "I am going to stand godfather; I don't like the
business; I cannot muster up decorum for these occasions; I shall
certainly disgrace the font; I was at Hazlitt's marriage and was like
to have been turned out several times during the ceremony. Anything
awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral."

Page 274, line 24. _Miss T----s_. In the _London Magazine_ "Miss
Turner's."

Page 274, line 27. _Black ... the costume of an author_. See note
below.