To Manning, then sojourning among the Mandarins, he thus writes of "Mr.
H.":--

"Now you'd like to know the subject. The title is 'Mr. H.',--no more:
how simple! how taking! A great H sprawling over the play-bill, and
attracting eyes at every corner. The story is a coxcomb appearing at
Bath, vastly rich,--all the ladies dying for him, all bursting to know
who he is; but he goes by no other name than Mr. H.: a curiosity like
that of the dames of Strasburg about the man with the great nose. But I
won't tell you any more about it. Yes, I will; but I can't give you an
idea how I have done it. I'll just tell you, that, after much vehement
admiration, when his true name comes out, 'Hogsflesh,' all the women
shun him, avoid him, and not one can be found to change their name for
him: that's the idea: how flat it is here! but how whimsical in
the farce! And only think how hard upon me it is, that the ship is
despatched to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be ascertained till the
Wednesday after;--but all China will ring of it by-and-by."

Would that Lamb's joyous and exultant anticipations of "Mr. H."'s
success had proved true! But, instead of being greeted with the applause
of pit and gallery, which would have stood Elia instead of "the unheard
voice of posterity," the piece was hissed and hooted from the stage.

In a letter to Manning, written early in 1808, he thus, half humorously,
half pathetically, describes the reception the town gave "Mr. H.":--

"So I go creeping on since I was lamed with that cursed fall from off
the top of Drury-Lane Theatre into the pit, something more than a year
ago. However, I have been free of the house ever since, and the house
was pretty free with me upon that occasion. Hang 'em, how they hissed!
It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a
congregation of mad geese, with roaring sometimes like bears, mows and
mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that hissed me into madness. 'Twas
like Saint Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God should give his
favorite children, men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally,
to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to
counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with, and that
they should turn them into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and
whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them like distillations
of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent labors of their
fellow-creatu