clinches the
matter:--

"MR. SARGUS,--This is to give you notice that I have parted with
the Cottage to Mr. Grig Junr. to whom you will pay rent from
Michaelmas last. The rent that was due at Michaelmas I do not
wish you to pay me. I forgive it you as you may have been at some
expences in repairs.

"Yours

"CH. LAMB.

"Inner Temple Lane, London,

"_23 Feb., 1815._"

It is certainly not the fact that Lamb acquired the property, as he
states, by the will of his godfather, for it was conveyed to him
some three years after the latter's death by Mrs. Fielde. But strict
accuracy of fact in Lamb's '_Essays_' we neither look for nor desire.
In all probability Mrs. Fielde conveyed him the property in accordance
with an expressed wish of her husband in his lifetime. Reading also
between the lines of the essay, it is interesting to notice that
Francis Fielde, the Holborn oilman of 1779, in 1809 has become Francis
Fielde, Esq., of New Cavendish Street. In the letter quoted above
Lamb speaks of his purchaser as "Mr. Grig Junr.," more, I am inclined
to think, from his desire to have his little joke than from mere
inaccuracy, for he must have known the correct name of his purchaser.
But Mr. Greg, Jun., was only just twenty-one when he bought the
property, and the expression "as merry as a grig" running in Lamb's
mind might have proved irresistible to him. Lastly, the property is
now called, and has been so far back as I can trace, "Button Snap." No
such name is found in any of the title-deeds, and it was impossible
before to understand whence it arose. Now it is not: Lamb must have so
christened his little property in jest, and the name has stuck.

THOMAS GREG.

Page 113, line 1. _The maternal lap_. With the exception of a brief
mention on page 33--"the gentle posture of maternal tenderness"--this
is Lamb's only reference to his mother in all the essays--probably
from the wish not to wound his sister, who would naturally read all he
wrote; although we are told by Talfourd that she spoke of her mother
with composure. But it is possible to be more sensitive for others
than they are for themselves.

Page 113, line 3. _The play was Artaxerxes_. The opera, by Thomas
Augustine Arne (1710-1778), produced in 1762, founded on Metastasio's
"Artaserse." The date of the performance was in all probability
December 1, 1780, although Lamb suggests that it was later; for that
was the only occasion in