Page 115. Twelfth Night Characters....

Morning Post, January 8, 1802.

These epigrams were identified by the late Mr. Dykes Campbell from a letter of Lamb’s to John Rickman, dated Jan. 14, 1802, printed in Ainger’s edition.

A——­ is, of course, Henry Addington (1757-1844), afterwards Viscount
Sidmouth.  After being Speaker for eleven years, he became suddenly Prime
Minister in 1801, at the wish of George III., who was rendered uneasy by
Pitt’s project for Catholic relief.

C——­ and F——­ were George Canning (1770-1827) and John Hookham Frere (1769-1846) of The Anti-Jacobin, against whom Lamb had a grudge on account of the Anti-Jacobin’s treatment of himself and Lloyd (see note to Blank Verse, page 320).  Lamb returned to the attack on Canning again and again, as the epigrams that follow will show.

The epigram on Count Rumford was not included.  We know that it was sent, from the Rickman letter.  The same missive tells us that that on Dr. Solomon was also written in 1802, but it was not printed till The Champion took it on July 15 and 16, 1820.  Solomon was alive in 1802 and was therefore a present Empiric.  He was a notorious quack doctor, author of the Guide to Health and the purveyor of a nostrum called Balm of Gilead.  One of Southey’s letters (October 14, 1801) contains a diverting account of this Empiric.  I copy one of Solomon’s advertisements from a provincial paper:—­

DR. SOLOMON’S
CORDIAL BALM OF GILEAD

To the young it will afford lasting health, strength and spirits, in place of lassitude and debility; and to the aged and infirm it will assuredly furnish great relief and comfort by gently and safely invigorating the system; it will not give immortality; but if it be in the power of medicine to gild the autumn of declining years, and calmly and serenely protract the close of life beyond its narrow span, this restorative is capable of effecting that grand desideratum.

The price was 10s. 6d. a bottle.

Lamb’s epigrams were only a few among many printed in the Morning Post for January 7 and 8, 1802.  Whether he wrote also the following I do not know, but these are not inconceivably from his hand:—­

LORD NELSON

Off with BRIAREUS, and his HUNDRED HANDS,
OUR NELSON, with one arm, unconquer’d stands!

MR. P[IT]T

By crooked arts, and actions sinister,
I came at first to be a Minister;
And now I am no longer Minister,
I still retain my actions sinister.

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Page 116. Two Epigrams. The Examiner, March 22, 1812.