ry
Lamb, at their little house, Colebrook Cottage, a whitish-brown
tenement, standing by itself, close to the New River, at Islington. He
was very kind, as he always was to young people, and very quaint. I told
him that I had devoured his "Roast Pig;" he congratulated me on
possessing a thorough schoolboy's appetite. And he was pleased when I
mentioned my having seen the boys at Christ's Hospital at their public
suppers, which then took place on the Sunday evenings in Lent. "Could
this good-natured and humorous old gentleman be prevailed upon to give
me an Epigram?" "I don't know," said my father, to whom I put the
question, "but I will ask him at any rate, and send him the mottoes." In
a day or two there arrived from Enfield, to which Lamb had removed some
time in 1827, not one, but two epigrams, one on each subject. That on
_Suum Cuique_ was in Latin, and was suggested by the grim satisfaction
which had recently been expressed by the public at the capture and
execution of some notorious highwayman. That on _Brevis esse laboro_ was
in English, and might have represented an adventure which had befallen
Lamb himself, for he stammered frequently, though he was not so grievous
a _Balbulus_ as his friend George Darley, whom I had also often seen. I
need scarcely say that the two Epigrams were highly appreciated, and
that my brother and myself, for I gave my brother one of them, were
objects of envy to our schoolfellows.

The death of George IV., however, prevented their being recited on the
occasion for which they were written.

"_Suum Cuique_," which was signed F. Hessey, was thus translated by its
presumptive author:--

A thief, on dreary Bagshot's heath well known,
Was fond of making others' goods his own;
_Meum_ was never thought of, nor was _Tuum_,
But everything with him was counted _Suum_.
At length each gets his own, and no one grieves;
The rope his neck, Jack Ketch his clothes receives:
His body to dissecting knife has gone;
Himself to Orcus: well--each gets his own.

The English epigram, which was signed J.A. Hessey, was a rhyming version
of a story which Lamb was fond of telling. Three, at least, of his
friends relate the story in their recollections of him: Mrs. Mathews in
her life of her husband; Leigh Hunt in _The Companion_; and De Quincey
in _Fraser's Magazine_. The incident possibly occurred to Lamb when as a
boy--or little more--he stayed at Margate abo