was
very kind to him.

* * * * *

Page 242. SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY.

_London Magazine_, September, 1823, where it was entitled "Nugae
Criticae. By the Author of Elia. No. 1. Defence of the Sonnets of Sir
Philip Sidney." Signed "L." The second and last of the "Nugae Criticae"
series was the note on "The Tempest" (see Vol. I.).

It may be interesting here to relate that Henry Francis Gary, the
translator of Dante, and Lamb's friend, had, says his son in his
memoir, lent Lamb Edward Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum_,
which was returned after Lamb's death by Edward Moxon, with the leaf
folded down at the account of Sir Philip Sidney. Mr. Gary thereupon
wrote his "Lines to the memory of Charles Lamb," which begin:--

So should it be, my gentle friend;
Thy leaf last closed at Sidney's end.
Thou, too, like Sidney, wouldst have given
The water, thirsting and near heaven.

Lamb has some interesting references to Sidney in the note to Beaumont
and Fletcher's "Maid's Tragedy" in the _Dramatic Specimens_.

Page 243, line 5. _Tibullus, or the ... Author of the Schoolmistress_.
In the _London Magazine_ Lamb wrote "Catullus." Tibullus was one of
the tenderest of Latin poets. William Shenstone (1714-1763) wrote "The
Schoolmistress," a favourite poem with Lamb. The "prettiest of poems"
he called it in a letter to John Clare.

Page 243, line 9. _Ad Leonoram_. The following translation of Milton's
sonnet was made by Leigh Hunt:--

TO LEONORA SINGING AT ROME

To every one (so have ye faith) is given
A winged guardian from the ranks of heaven.
A greater, Leonora, visits thee:
Thy voice proclaims the present deity.
Either the present deity we hear,
Or he of the third heaven hath left his sphere,
And through the bosom's pure and warbling wells,
Breathes tenderly his smoothed oracles;
Breathes tenderly, and so with easy rounds
Teaches our mortal hearts to bear immortal sounds.
If God is all, and in all nature dwells,
In thee alone he speaks, mute ruler in all else.

The Latin in Masson's edition of Milton differs here and there from
Lamb's version.

Page 243. _Sonnet I_. Lamb cites the sonnets from _Astrophel and
Stella_, in his own order. That which he calls I. is XXXI.; II.,
XXXIX.; III., XXIII.; IV., XXVII.; V., XLI.; VI., LIII.; VII., LXIV.;
VIII., LXXIII.; IX., LXXIV.; X., LXXV.; XI., CIII.; XII., LXXXIV.
I have left the sonnets as