here we
flourished four centuries back, before the barbarous name of
Boldero[2] was known to a European mouth, nothing? Was the goodly
scion of our name, transplanted into England, in the reign of the
seventh Henry, nothing? Are the archives of the steel yard, in
succeeding reigns (if haply they survive the fury of our envious
enemies) showing that we flourished in prime repute, as merchants,
down to the period of the commonwealth, nothing?

"Why then the world, and all that's in't is nothing--
The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia is nothing.--

"I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have power to move
me so."

Leigh Hunt, in _The Indicator_, January 31 and February 7, 1821, had
reprinted from _The Examiner_ a review of Lamb's _Works_, with a few
prefatory remarks in which it was stated: "We believe we are taking no
greater liberty with him [Charles Lamb] than our motives will warrant,
when we add that he sometimes writes in the _London Magazine_ under
the signature of Elia."

In _The Indicator_ of March 7, 1821, Leigh Hunt replied to Elia. Leigh
Hunt was no match for Lamb in this kind of raillery, and the first
portion of the reply is rather cumbersome. At the end, however, he
says: "There _was_, by the bye, a family of the name of Elia who came
from Italy,--Jews; which may account for this boast about Genoa. See
also in his last article in the London Magazine [the essay on "Ears"]
some remarkable fancies of conscience in reference to the Papal
religion. They further corroborate what we have heard; _viz._ that the
family were obliged to fly from Genoa for saying that the Pope was
the author of Rabelais; and that Elia is not an anagram, as some have
thought it, but the Judaico-Christian name of the writer before us,
whose surname, we find, is not Lamb, but Lomb;--Elia Lomb! What a
name! He told a friend of ours so in company, and would have palmed
himself upon him for a Scotchman, but that his countenance betrayed
him."

It is amusing to note that Maginn, writing the text to accompany the
Maclise portrait of Lamb in _Fraser's Magazine_ in 1835, gravely
states that Lamb's name was really Lomb, and that he was of Jewish
extraction.

The subject of Lamb's birth reopened a little while later. In
the "Lion's Head," which was the title of the pages given to
correspondence in the _London Magazine_, in the number for November,
1821, was the following short article