s a book wanting "a sounder
religious feeling," and which led to Lamb's expostulatory "Letter"
(see Vol. I.). Southey commented thus:--

This poor child, instead of being trained up in the way in which
he should go, had been bred in the ways of modern philosophy; he
had systematically been prevented from knowing anything of that
Saviour who said, "Suffer little children to come unto Me, and
forbid them not; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven;" care had
been taken that he should not pray to God, nor lie down at night
in reliance upon His good Providence!

T.H. was Thornton Hunt, Leigh Hunt's eldest son and Lamb's "favourite
child" (see verses to him in Vol. IV.).

Page 79, line 18 from foot. _Barry Cornwall_. Bryan Waller Procter
(1787-1874), Lamb's friend. The reference is to "A Dream," a poem in
Barry Cornwall's _Dramatic Scenes_, 1819, which Lamb greatly admired.
See his sonnet to the poet in Vol. IV., where it is mentioned again.

Page 80, last paragraph of essay. In the original MS. of this essay
(now in the Dyce and Forster collection at South Kensington) the last
paragraph ran thus:--

"When I awoke I came to a determination to write prose all the
rest of my life; and with submission to some of our young writers,
who are yet diffident of their powers, and balancing perhaps
between verse and prose, they might not do unwisely to decide the
preference by the texture of their natural dreams. If these are
prosaic, they may depend upon it they have not much to expect in
a creative way from their artificial ones. What dreams must not
Spenser have had!"

* * * * *

Page 80. MY RELATIONS.

_London Magazine_, June, 1821.

Page 80, beginning. _At that point of life_. Lamb was forty-six on
February 10, 1821.

Page 80, line 12 of essay. _I had an aunt_. Aunt Hetty, who died in
1797 (see the essay on "Christ's Hospital").

Page 81, line 6. _The chapel in Essex-street_. The headquarters of
"that heresy," Unitarianism. Lamb was at first a Unitarian, but
afterwards dropped away from all sects.

Page 81, line 23. _Brother, or sister, I never had any--to know them_.
Lamb is writing strictly as the imagined Elia, Elia being Lamb in mind
rather than Lamb in fact. It amused him to present his brother John
and his sister Mary as his cousins James and Bridget Elia. We have
here an excellent example of his whimsical blending of tru