and is dedicated to Edith May Southey—­

        Edith! ten years are number’d, since the day.

Edith Southey was born in 1804.  The dedication was dated 1814.

John May was Southey’s friend and correspondent.  It was not he that had died.

“The Vesper Bell”—­“The Chapel Bell,” which was not in the Annual Anthology, but in Southey’s Poems, 1797.  Dear George would perhaps be Burnett, who was at Oxford with Southey when the verses were written.

“The compliment to the translatress.”  Southey took his Tale of Paraguay from Dobrizhoffer’s History of the Abipones, which his niece, Sara Coleridge, had translated.  Southey remarks in the poem that could Dobrizhoffer have foreseen by whom his words were to be turned into English, he would have been as pleased as when he won the ear of the Empress Queen.

“Landor’s ... allegorising.”  Landor, in the conversation between “Peter Leopold and the President du Paty,” makes President du Paty say that Cervantes had deeper purpose than the satirising of knight-errants, Don Quixote standing for the Emperor Charles V. and Sancho Panza symbolising the people.  Southey quoted the passage in the Notes to the Proem.  Lamb’s Elia essay on the “Defect of Imagination” (see Vol.  II.) amplifies this criticism of Don Quixote.

“A one-act farce.”  This was, I imagine, “The Pawnbroker’s Daughter,” although that is in two acts.  It was not, however, acted.

George Dyer had just been married to the widow of a solicitor who lived opposite him in Clifford’s Inn.

Here should come three unimportant notes to Hone with reference to the Every-Day Book—­adding an invitation to Enfield to be shown “dainty spots.”]

LETTER 381

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP

[P.M.  Sept. 9, 1825.]

My dear Allsop—­We are exceedingly grieved for your loss.  When your note came, my sister went to Pall Mall, to find you, and saw Mrs. L. and was a little comforted to find Mrs. A. had returned to Enfield before the distresful event.  I am very feeble, can scarce move a pen; got home from Enfield on the Friday, and on Monday follow’g was laid up with a most violent nervous fever second this summer, have had Leeches to my Temples, have not had, nor can not get, a night’s sleep.  So you will excuse more from Yours truly, C. LAMB.

Islington, 9 Sept.

Our most kind rememb’ces to poor Mrs. Allsop.  A line to say how you both are will be most acceptable.

[Allsop’s loss was, I imagine, the death of one of his children.]

LETTER 382

CHARLES LAMB TO THOMAS ALLSOP

[P.M.  Sept. 24, 1825.]

My dear Allsop—­Come not near this unfortunate roof yet a while.  My disease is clearly but slowly going.  Field is an excellent attendant.  But Mary’s anxieties have overturned her.  She has her old Miss James with her, without whom I should not feel a support in the world.  We keep in separate apartments, and must weather it.  Let me know all of your healths.  Kindest love to Mrs. Allsop.  C. LAMB.