almost certainly by Lamb:--

"Violence or injustice certainly none, Mr. Elia. But you will
acknowledge that the charming unsuspectingness of our friend has
sometimes laid him open to attacks, which, though savouring (we
hope) more of waggery than malice--such is our unfeigned respect
for G.D.--might, we think, much better have been omitted. Such was
that silly joke of L[amb], who, at the time the question of the
Scotch Novels was first agitated, gravely assured our friend--who
as gravely went about repeating it in all companies--that Lord
Castlereagh had acknowledged himself to be the author of Waverly!
_Note--not by Elia."_

Page 12, line 11. _"Strike an abstract idea."_ I do not find this
quotation--if it be one; but when John Lamb once knocked Hazlitt down,
during an argument on pigments, Hazlitt refrained from striking back,
remarking that he was a metaphysician and dealt not in blows but in
ideas. Lamb may be slyly remembering this.

Page 12, line 15. C----. Cambridge. Dyer added a work on _Privileges
of the University if Cambridge_ to his _History_.

Page 12, line 8 from foot. _Our friend M.'s._ Basil Montagu, Q.C.
(1770-1851), legal writer, philanthropist, editor of Bacon, and the
friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge. The Mrs. M. here referred to was
Montagu's third wife, a Mrs. Skepper. It was she who was called by
Edward Irving "the noble lady," and to whom Carlyle addressed some
early letters. A.S. was Anne Skepper, afterwards Mrs. Bryan Waller
Procter, a fascinating lady who lived to a great age and died as
recently as 1888. The Montagus then lived at 25 Bedford Square.

Page 13, line 17. _Starts like a thing surprised._ Here we have an
interesting example of Lamb's gift of fused quotation. Wordsworth's
line in the "Ode on Intimations of Immortality,"

Tremble like a guilty thing surprised,

and Shakespeare's phrase in "Hamlet" (Act I., Scene 1, line 148),

Started like a guilty thing,

were probably both in his mind as he wrote.

Page 13, line 24. _Obtruded personal presence._ In the _London
Magazine_ the following passage came here:--

"D. commenced life, after a course of hard study in the 'House of
pure Emanuel,' as usher to a knavish fanatic schoolmaster at ***,
at a salary of eight pounds per annum, with board and lodging.
Of this poor stipend, he never received above half in all the
laborious years he served this man. He tells