ght
expressed in its annual reports in the exposure of impostors was a
shade too hearty--at any rate one can see therein cause sufficient for
Lamb's counter-blast. Lamb was not the only critic of Mr. Bodkin's
zeal. Hood, in the _Odes and Addresses_, published in 1825, included a
remonstrance to Mr. Bodkin.

The Society's activity led to a special commission of the House
of Commons in 1821 to inquire into the laws relating to vagrants,
concerning which Lamb speaks, the clergyman alluded to being Dr.
Henry Butts Owen, of Highgate. The result of the commission was an
additional stringency, brought about by Mr. George Chetwynd's bill.

It was this essay, says Hood, which led to his acquaintance with
Charles Lamb. After its appearance in the _London Magazine_, of which
Hood was then sub-editor, he wrote Lamb a letter on coarse paper
purporting to come from a grateful beggar; Lamb did not admit the
discovery of the perpetrator of the joke, but soon afterwards Lamb
called on Hood when he was ill, and a friendship followed to which we
owe Hood's charming recollections of Lamb--among the best that were
written of him by any one.

Page 131, line 14. _The Blind Beggar_. The reference is to the ballad
of "The Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green." The version in the _Percy
Reliques_ relates the adventures of Henry, Earl of Leicester, the son
of Simon de Montfort, who was blinded at the battle of Evesham and
left for dead, and thereafter begged his way with his pretty Bessee.
In the _London Magazine_ Lamb had written "Earl of Flanders," which
he altered to "Earl of Cornwall" in _Elia_. The ballad says Earl of
Leicester.

Page 131, line 28. _Dear Margaret Newcastle_. One of Lamb's recurring
themes of praise (see "The Two Races of Men," "Mackery End in
Hertfordshire," and "Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading").
"Romancical," according to the _New English Dictionary_, is Lamb's own
word. This is the only reference given for it.

Page 133, line 7. _Spital sermons_. On Monday of Easter week it was
the custom for the Christ's Hospital boys to walk in procession to the
Royal Exchange, and on Tuesday to the Mansion House; on each occasion
returning with the Lord Mayor to hear a special sermon--a spital
sermon, as it was called--and an anthem. The sermon is now preached
only on Easter Tuesday.

Page 133, line 24. _Overseers of St. L----_. Lamb's Key states that
both the overseers and the mild rector were inventions. In the _London