h he would not quarrel with
the world at the rate he does; but the reconciliation must be effected by
himself, and I despair of living to see that day. But, protesting against
much that he has written, and some things he chooses to do; judging him by
his conversation which I enjoyed so long, and relished so deeply; or by
his books, in those places where no clouding passion intervenes--I should
belie my own conscience, if I said less, than that I think W. H. to be, in
his natural and healthy state, one of the wisest and finest spirits
breathing. So far from being ashamed of that intimacy, which was betwixt
us, it is my boast that I was able for so many years to have preserved it
entire; and I think I shall go to my grave without finding, or expecting
to find, such another companion."

_Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy_ was published in 1621. Its quaint prose
was often imitated by Lamb and had a direct effect on his style.

_Sir Thomas Browne_ (1605-1682), physician and essayist, author of
"Religio Medici" (1642), "Pseudodoxia Epidemica" (1646), and "Hydriotaphia
or Urn Burial" (1658).

_Fuller's Worthies_. The "History of the Worthies of England" (1662) is
the best known work of Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), an English divine and
writer on church history.

_does not make him despise Pope_. See p. 322.

_Parnell_, Thomas (1679-1717). In the sixth lecture on the "English Poets"
Hazlitt says: "Parnell, though a good-natured, easy man, and a friend to
poets and the Muses, was himself little more than an occasional
versifier."

_Gay_, John (1685-1732), is best known by his "Beggar's Opera" (1728) and
"Fables" (1727 and 1738). Hazlitt writes of Gay in the sixth lecture on
the "English Poets" and has a paper on "The Beggar's Opera" in the "Round
Table."

_His taste in French and German_. Cf. "On Old English Writers and
Speakers" in the "Plain Speaker": "Mr. Lamb has lately taken it into his
head to read St. Evremont, and works of that stamp. I neither praise nor
blame him for it. He observed, that St. Evremont was a writer half-way
between Montaigne and Voltaire, with a spice of the wit of the one and the
sense of the other. I said I was always of the opinion that there had been
a great many clever people in the world, both in France and England, but I
had been sometimes rebuked for it. Lamb took this as a slight reproach;
for he had been a little exclusive and national in his tastes."

P. 225. _His admiration of Hogarth_.