ure,
while the good man sits undisturbed at the sight, as if he were
sole tenant of the desart.--The individual rabble (I recognised
more than one of their ugly faces) had damned a slight piece of
mine but a few nights before, and I was determined the culprits
should not a second time put me out of countenance."

Master Betty was William Henry West Betty (1791-1874), known as the
"Young Roscius," whose Hamlet and Douglas sent playgoers wild in
1804-5-6. Pitt, indeed, once adjourned the House in order that his
Hamlet might be witnessed. His most cried-up scenes in "Hamlet" were
the "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and the fencing scene before the
king and his mother. The piece of Lamb's own which had been hissed
was, of course, "Mr. H.," produced on December 10, 1806; but very
likely he added this reference as a symmetrical afterthought, for he
would probably have visited Master Betty much earlier in his career,
that phenomenon's first appearance at Covent Garden being two years
before the advent of the ill-fated Hogsflesh.

Page 200, line 22. _Martin B----_. Martin Charles Burney, son of
Admiral Burney, and a lifelong friend of the Lambs--to whom Lamb
dedicated the prose part of his _Works_ in 1818 (see Vol. IV.).

Page 200, line 28. _A quaint poetess_. Mary Lamb. The poem is in
_Poetry for Children_, 1809 (see Vol. III. of this edition). In line
17 the word "then" has been inserted by Lamb. The punctuation also
differs from that of the _Poetry for Children_.

* * * * *

Page 201. THE OLD _MARGATE HOY_.

_London Magazine_, July, 1823. This, like others of Lamb's essays, was
translated into French and published in the _Revue Britannique_ in
1833. It was prefaced by the remark: "L'auteur de cette delicieuse
esquisse est Charles Lamb, connu sous le nom d'Eliah."

Page 201, beginning. _I have said so before._ See "Oxford in the
Vacation."

Page 201, line 5 of essay. _My beloved Thames._ Lamb describes a
riparian holiday at and about Richmond in a letter to Robert Lloyd in
1804.

Page 201, line 8 of essay. _Worthing_... There is no record of the
Lambs' sojourn at Worthing or Eastbourne. They were at Brighton in
1817, and Mary Lamb at any rate enjoyed walking on the Downs there; in
a letter to Miss Wordsworth of November 21, 1817, she described them
as little mountains, _almost as good as_ Westmoreland scenery. They
were at Hastings--at 13 Standgate Street--in 1823