of Lamb's old friend. Admiral
Burney wrote _An Essay on the Game of Whist_, which was published in
1821. As he lived until November, 1821, he probably read the present
essay. Writing to Wordsworth, March 20, 1822, Lamb says: "There's
Capt. Burney gone!--what fun has whist now; what matters it what you
lead, if you can no longer fancy him looking over you?"

Page 37, line 1 of essay. "_A clean hearth_." To this, in the _London
Magazine_, Lamb put the footnote:--

"This was before the introduction of rugs, reader. You must remember
the intolerable crash of the unswept cinder, betwixt your foot and the
marble."

Page 37, line 8 of essay. _Win one game, and lose another_. To this,
in the _London Magazine_, Lamb put the note:--

"As if a sportsman should tell you he liked to kill a fox one day,
and lose him the next."

Page 38, line 26. _Mr. Bowles_. The Rev. William Lisle Bowles
(1762-1850), whose sonnets had so influenced Coleridge's early
poetical career. His edition of Pope was published in 1806. I have
tried in vain to discover if Mr. Bowles' MS. and notes for this
edition are still in existence. If so, they might contain Lamb's
contribution. But it is rather more likely, I fear, that Lamb invented
the story. The game of ombre is in Canto III. of _The Rape of the
Lock_.

The only writing on cards which we know Lamb to have done, apart from
this essay, is the elementary rules of whist which he made out for
Mrs. Badams quite late in his life as a kind of introduction to the
reading of Admiral Burney's treatise. This letter is in America and
has never been printed except privately; nor, if its owner can help
it, will it.

Page 40, line 26. _Old Walter Plumer_. See the essay on "The South-Sea
House."

Page 42, line 18 from foot. _Bad passions_. Here came in the _London
Magazine_, in parenthesis, "(dropping for a while the speaking mask of
old Sarah Battle)."

Page 43, line 2. _Bridget Elia_. This is Lamb's first reference in
the essays to Mary Lamb under this name. See "Mackery End" and "Old
China."

A little essay on card playing in the _Every-Day Book_, the authorship
of which is unknown, but which may be Hone's, ends with the following
pleasant passage:--

Cousin Bridget and the gentle Elia seem beings of that age wherein
lived Pamela, whom, with "old Sarah Battle," we may imagine
entering their room, and sitting down with them to a _square_
game. Yet Bridget and Elia live in our