tells Manning of Braham's absence from London,
adding: "He was a rare composition of the Jew, the gentleman, and the
angel; yet all these elements mixed up so kindly in him that you could
not tell which preponderated." In this essay Lamb refers to Braham's
singing in Handel's oratorio "Israel in Egypt." Concerning Braham's
abandonment of the Jewish faith see Lamb's sarcastic essay "The
Religion of Actors," Vol. I., page 338.

Page 73, line 17 from foot. _I was travelling_. Lamb did not really
take part in this story. It was told him by Sir Anthony Carlisle
(1768-1840), the surgeon, as he confessed to his Quaker friend,
Bernard Barton (March 11, 1823), who seemed to miss its point. Lamb
described Carlisle as "the best story-teller I ever heard."

* * * * *

Page 74. WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT-FEARS.

_London Magazine_, October, 1821.

Compare with this essay Maria Howe's story of "The Witch Aunt," in
_Mrs. Leicester's School_ (see Vol. III.), which Lamb had written
thirteen years earlier.

Page 75, line 12 from foot. _History of the Bible, by Stackhouse_.
Thomas Stackhouse (1677-1752) was rector of Boldon, in Durham; his
_New History of the Holy Bible from the Beginning of the World to the
Establishment of Christianity_--the work in question--was published in
1737.

Page 75, line 6 from foot. _The Witch raising up Samuel_. This
paragraph was the third place in which Lamb recorded his terror of
this picture of the Witch of Endor in Stackhouse's _Bible_, but the
first occasion in which he took it to himself. In one draft of _John
Woodvil_ (see Vol. IV.), the hero says:--

I can remember when a child the maids
Would place me on their lap, as they undrest me,
As silly women use, and tell me stories
Of Witches--make me read "Glanvil on Witchcraft,"
And in conclusion show me in the Bible,
The old Family Bible, with the pictures in it,
The 'graving of the Witch raising up Samuel,
Which so possest my fancy, being a child,
That nightly in my dreams an old Hag came
And sat upon my pillow.

Then again, in _Mrs. Leicester's School_, in the story of Maria Howe,
called "The Witch Aunt," one of the three stories in that book which
Lamb wrote, Stackhouse's _Bible_ is found once more. In my large
edition I give a reproduction of the terrible picture. Page 77, foot.
_Dear little T.H._ This was the unlucky passage which gave Southey his
chief text in his criticism of _Elia_ a