himself. He tells the story to Manning in the letter of January
2,1810.--Lamb's friend Hume was Joseph Hume of the victualling office,
Somerset House, to whom letters from Lamb will be found in Mr. W.C.
Hazlitt's _Lamb and Hazlitt_, 1900. Hume translated _The Inferno_ of
Dante into blank verse, 1812.--The "Beggar's Petition," a stock piece
for infant recitation a hundred years ago, was a poem beginning
thus:--

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span;
Oh give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.

In the reference to Wordsworth Lamb pokes fun at the statement, in his
friend's preface to the second edition of _Lyrical Ballads_, that
the purpose of that book was to relate or describe incidents and
situations from common life as far as possible in a selection of
language really used by men.

Lamb's _P.S._ concerning the "Beggar's Petition" was followed in the
_London Magazine_ by this _N.B._:--

"N.B. I am glad to see JANUS veering about to the old quarter. I
feared he had been rust-bound.

"C. being asked why he did not like Gold's 'London' as well as
ours--it was in poor S.'s time--replied--

"_--Because there is no WEATHERCOCK
And that's the reason why._"

The explanation of this note is that "Janus Weathercock"--one of the
pseudonyms of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright--after a long absence from
its pages, had sent to the previous month's _London Magazine_, May,
1822, an amusing letter of criticism of that periodical, commenting on
some of its regular contributors. Therein he said: "Clap Elia on the
back for such a series of good behaviour."--Who C. is cannot be said;
possibly Lamb, as a joke, intends Coleridge to be indicated; but poor
S. would be John Scott, the first editor of the _London Magazine_,
who was killed in a duel. C.'s reply consisted of the last lines
of Wordsworth's "Anecdote for Fathers; or, Falsehood Corrected."
Accurately they run:--

At Kelve there was no weather-cock
And that's the reason why.

The hero of this poem was a son of Lamb's friend Basil Montagu.

Gold's _London Magazine_ was a contemporary of the better known London
magazine of the same name. In Vol. III. appeared an article entitled
"The Literary Ovation," describing an imaginary dinner-party given by
Messrs. Baldwin, Cradock & Joy in February, 1821, at which Lamb was
supposed to be prese