of going to see, and at the same
time to refresh my memory with the sight of old scenes. Mr.
Lamb has the character of a right courteous and communicative
collector."

Mr. Lamb was, of course, John Lamb, or James Elia (see the essay "My
Relations"), then (in 1820) Accountant of the South-Sea House. He left
the Milton to his brother. It is now in America.

Page 6, line 5 from foot. _Henry Man_. This was Henry Man (1747-1790),
deputy-secretary of the South-Sea House from 1776, and an author
of light trifles in the papers, and of one or two books. The
_Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose of the late Henry Man_ was
published in 1802, among the subscribers being three of the officials
named in this essay--John Evans, R. Plumer, and Mr. Tipp, and also
Thomas Maynard, who, though assigned to the Stock Exchange, is
probably the "childlike, pastoral M----" of a later paragraph. Small
politics are for the most part kept out of Man's volumes, which are
high-spirited rather than witty, but this punning epigram (of which
Lamb was an admirer) on Lord Spencer and Lord Sandwich may be
quoted:--

Two Lords whose names if I should quote,
Some folks might call me sinner:
The one invented _half a coat_,
The other _half a dinner_.

Such lords as these are useful men,
Heaven sends them to console one;
Because there's now not one in ten,
That can procure a _whole one_.

Page 7, line 13. _Plumer_. Richard Plumer (spelled Plomer in the
directories), deputy-secretary after Man. Lamb was peculiarly
interested in the Plumers from the fact that his grandmother, Mrs.
Field, had been housekeeper of their mansion at Blakesware, near Ware
(see notes to "Dream-Children" and "Blakesmoor in H----shire"). The
fine old Whig was William Plumer, who had been her employer, and was
now living at Gilston. He died in 1821.

The following passage from the memoir of Edward Cave (1691-1754),
which Dr. Johnson wrote for the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (which Cave
established) in 1754, shows that Lamb was mistaken about Plumer:--

He [Cave] was afterwards raised to the office of clerk of the
franks, in which he acted with great spirit and firmness; and
often stopped franks which were given by members of parliament to
their friends; because he thought such extension of a peculiar
right illegal. This raised many complaints, and having stopped,
among others, a frank given to the old dutchess of _Marlb