Frances Maria Kelly (1790-1882)—­or Fanny Kelly, as she was usually called—­was Lamb’s favourite actress of his middle and later life and a personal friend of himself and his sister:  so close that Lamb proposed marriage to her.  See Lamb’s criticisms of Miss Kelly’s acting in Vol.  I., and notes.  Another sonnet addressed by Lamb to Miss Kelly will be found on page 59 of the present volume.

Page 43. On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden.  This is, I think, Lamb’s only poem the inspiration of which was drawn from nature.

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Page 44. The Family Name.

John Lamb, Charles’s father, came from Lincoln.  A recollection of his boyhood there is given in the Elia essay “Poor Relations.”  The “stream” seems completely to have ended with Charles Lamb and his sister Mary:  at least, research has yielded no descendants.

Crabb Robinson visited Goethe in the summer of 1829.  The Diary has this entry:  “I inquired whether he knew the name of Lamb.  ’Oh, yes!  Did he not write a pretty sonnet on his own name?’ Charles Lamb, though he always affected contempt for Goethe, yet was manifestly pleased that his name was known to him.”

In the little memoir of Lamb prefixed by M. Amedee Pichot to a French edition of the Tales from Shakespeare in 1842 the following translation of this sonnet is given:—­

MON NOM DE FAMILLE

Dis-moi, d’ou nous viens-tu, nom pacifique et doux,
Nom transmis sans reproche?...  A qui te devons-nous,
Nom qui meurs avec moi? mon glason de poete
A l’aieul de mon pere obscurement s’arrete. 
—­Peut-etre nous viens-tu d’un timide pasteur,
Doux comme ses agneaux, raille pour sa douceur. 
Mais peut-etre qu’aussi, moins commune origine,
Nous viens-tu d’un heros, d’un pieux paladin,
Qui croyant honorer ainsi l’Agneau divin,
Te prit en revenant des champs de Palestine. 
Mais qu’importe apres tout ... qu’il soit illustre ou non,
Je ne ferai jamais une tache a ce nom.

Page 44. To John Lamb, Esq.

John Lamb, Charles’s brother, was born in 1763 and was thus by twelve years his senior.  At the time this poem appeared, in 1818, he was accountant of the South-Sea House.  He died on October 26, 1821 (see the Elia essays “My Relations” and “Dream Children").

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Page 45. To Martin Charles Burney, Esq.

Lamb prefixed this sonnet to Vol.  II. of his Works, 1818.  In Vol.  I. he had placed the dedication to Coleridge which we have already seen.  Martin Charles Burney was the son of Rear-Admiral James Burney, Lamb’s old friend, and nephew of Madame d’Arblay.  He was a barrister by profession; dabbled a little in authorship; was very quaint in some of his ways and given to curiously intense and sudden enthusiasms; and was devoted to Mary Lamb and