from Lamb's pen:--

"ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS.--A Correspondent, who writes himself
Peter Ball, or Bell,--for his hand-writing is as ragged as his
manners--admonishes me of the old saying, that some people (under
a courteous periphrasis I slur his less ceremonious epithet) had
need have good memories. In my 'Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,'
I have delivered myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours
upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems that
in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scribbler who had
called my good identity in question, (see P.S. to my 'Chapter on
Ears,') I profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish
Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who does not
see, except this tinkling cymbal, that in that idle fiction
of Genoese ancestry I was answering a fool according to his
folly--that Elia there expresseth himself ironically, as to an
approved slanderer, who hath no right to the truth, and can be
no fit recipient of it? Such a one it is usual to leave to his
delusions; or, leading him from error still to contradictory
error, to plunge him (as we say) deeper in the mire, and give
him line till he suspend himself. No understanding reader could
be imposed upon by such obvious rhodomontade to suspect me
for an alien, or believe me other than English.--To a second
Correspondent, who signs himself 'a Wiltshire man,' and claims me
for a countryman upon the strength of an equivocal phrase in my
'Christ's Hospital,' a more mannerly reply is due. Passing over
the Genoese fable, which Bell makes such a ring about, he nicely
detects a more subtle discrepancy, which Bell was too obtuse to
strike upon. Referring to the passage (in page 484 of our second
volume[3]), I must confess, that the term 'native town,' applied
to Calne, _prima facie_ seems to bear out the construction which
my friendly Correspondent is willing to put upon it. The context
too, I am afraid, a little favours it. But where the words of
an author, taken literally, compared with some other passage
in his writings, admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable
contradiction, it hath been the custom of the ingenuous
commentator to smooth the difficulty by the supposition, that
in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense was chiefly
intended. So by the