contributions, in its best days, from De Quincey, Allan
Cunningham (Nalla), T.G. Wainewright, afterwards the poisoner, but
in those days an amusing weaver of gay artificial prose, John Clare,
Bernard Barton, H.F. Cary, Richard Ayton, George Darley, Thomas Hood,
John Hamilton Reynolds, Sir John Bowring, John Poole, B.W. Procter;
while among occasional writers for it were Thomas Carlyle, Landor and
Julius Hare.

The essay, "Stage Illusion," in the number for August, 1825, was,
I believe, the last that Lamb contributed. (In this connection see
Mr. Bertram Dobell's _Sidelights on Charles Lamb_, 1903.) Lamb then
passed over to Colburn's _New Monthly Magazine_, where the "Popular
Fallacies" appeared, together with certain other of his later essays.
His last contribution to that magazine was dated September, 1826. In
1827 he was chiefly occupied in selecting Garrick play extracts for
Hone's _Table Book_, at the British Museum, and for a while after that
he seems to have been more interested in writing acrostics and album
verses than prose. In 1831, however, Moxon's _Englishman's Magazine_
offered harbourage for anything Lamb cared to give it, and a brief
revival of Elia (under the name of Peter) resulted. With its death in
October, 1831, Lamb's writing career practically ceased.

* * * * *

Page 1. THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE.

_London Magazine_, August, 1820.

Although the "Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married
People," "Valentine's Day," and "On the Acting of Munden," were all
written before this essay, it is none the less the first of the
essays of Elia. I have remarked, in the notes to a small edition of
_Elia_, that it is probably unique in literature for an author to
find himself, as Lamb did, in his forty-fourth year, by recording
impressions gathered in his seventeenth; but I think now that Lamb
probably visited his brother at the South-Sea House from time to time
in later years, and gathered other impressions then. I am led to this
conclusion partly by the fact that Thomas Tame was not appointed
Deputy-Accountant until four or five years after Lamb had left.

We do not know exactly what Lamb's duties were at the South-Sea
House or how long he was there: probably only for the twenty-three
weeks--from September, 1791--mentioned in the receipt below,
discovered by Mr. J.A. Rutter in a little exhibition of documents
illustrative of the South Sea Bubble in the Albert Museum at Exet