lkd of somebody's _insipid wife_, without a correspondent object in
my head: and a good lady, a friend's wife, whom I really _love_ (don't
startle, I mean in a licit way) has looked shyly on me ever since. The
blunders of personal application are numerous. I send out a character
every now and then, on purpose to exercise the ingenuity of my
friends."

Page 304, line 11 from foot. _Merry, of Delia Cruscan memory_. Robert
Merry (1755-1798), an affected versifier who settled in Florence as a
young man, and contributed to the _Florence Miscellany_. He became
a member of the Delia Cruscan Academy, and on returning to England
signed his verses, in _The World_, "Delia Crusca." A reply to his
first effusion, "Adieu and Recall to Love," was written by Mrs. Hannah
Cowley, author of _The Belle's Stratagem_, and signed "Anna Matilda;"
this correspondence continued; a fashion of sentiment was thus
started; and for a while Delia Cruscan poetry was the rage. The
principal Delia Cruscan poems were published in the _British Album_
in 1789, and the collection was popular until Gifford's _Baviad_
(followed by his _Maeviad_) appeared in 1791, and satirised its
conceits so mercilessly that the school collapsed. A meeting with Anna
Matilda in the flesh and the discovery that she was twelve years his
senior had, however, put an end to Merry's enthusiasm long before
Gifford's attack. Merry afterwards threw in his lot with the French
Revolution, and died in America. He married, as Lamb says, Elizabeth
Brunton, an excellent tragic actress, in 1791. But that was in
England. The journey to America came later.

The story of Merry's avoidance of the lady of his first choice is
probably true. Carlo Antonio Delpini was a famous pantomimist in his
day at Drury Lane, Covent Garden and the Haymarket. He also was
stage manager at the Opera for a while, and occasionally arranged
entertainments for George IV. at Brighton. He died in 1828.

Page 305. XIV.--THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK.

_New Monthly Magazine_, February, 1826.

Compare "The Superannuated Man," to which this little essay, which,
with that following, is one of Lamb's most characteristic and perfect
works, serves as a kind of postscript.

Page 308. XV.--THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB.

_New Monthly Magazine_, February, 1826.

Page 309. XVI.--THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE.

_New Monthly Magazine_, September, 1826.

This was the last of the series and Lamb's last cont