ening") in the description of glees by the
old cricketers at the Bat and Ball on Broad Halfpenny Down, near
Hambledon--I refer to John Nyren, author of _The Young Cricketer's
Tutor_, 1833. There is no evidence that Lamb and Nyren ever met, but
one feels that they ought to have done so, in Novello's hospitable
rooms.

Page 48, line 3. _Lutheran beer_. Edmund Ollier, the son of Charles
Ollier, the publisher of Lamb's _Works_, 1818, in his reminiscences of
Lamb, prefixed to one edition of _Elia_, tells this story: "Once at a
musical party at Leigh Hunt's, being oppressed with what to him was
nothing but a prolonged noise ... he said--'If one only had a pot of
porter, one might get through this.' It was procured for him and he
weathered the Mozartian storm."

In the _London Magazine_ this essay had the following postscript:--

"P.S.--A writer, whose real name, it seems, is _Boldero_, but who
has been entertaining the town for the last twelve months, with
some very pleasant lucubrations, under the assumed signature of
_Leigh Hunt_[1], in his Indicator, of the 31st January last, has
thought fit to insinuate, that I _Elia_ do not write the little
sketches which bear my signature, in this Magazine; but that the
true author of them is a Mr. L----b. Observe the critical period
at which he has chosen to impute the calumny!--on the very
eve of the publication of our last number--affording no scope
for explanation for a full month--during which time, I must
needs lie writhing and tossing, under the cruel imputation of
nonentity.--Good heavens! that a plain man must not be allowed
_to be_--

"They call this an age of personality: but surely this spirit of
anti-personality (if I may so express it) is something worse.

"Take away my moral reputation: I may live to discredit that
calumny.

"Injure my literary fame,--I may write that up again--

"But when a gentleman is robbed of his identity, where is he?

"Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail and perishing
trifle at the best. But here is an assassin who aims at our very
essence; who not only forbids us _to be_ any longer, but _to have
been_ at all. Let our ancestors look to it--

"Is the parish register nothing? Is the house in Princes-street,
Cavendish-square, where we saw the light six-and-forty years
ago, nothing? Were our progenitors from stately Genoa, w