These epigrams have no signature, but the second of them was reprinted in The Poetical Recreations of “The Champion" (1822) with Lamb’s signature, R. et R., appended, and a note saying that it was written in the last reign, together with an announcement that it had not appeared in The Champion, but was inserted in that collection at the author’s request.  By Princeps and the heir-apparent is meant, of course, the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., who had just entered upon office as Regent.  The epigrams refer to his transfer of confidence, if so it may be called, from the Whig party to the Marquis Wellesley, Perceval and the Tory party.  The circumstance that the Prince of Wales was also Duke of Cornwall is referred to in the first epigram.  The second of the epigrams is copied into one of Lamb’s Commonplace Books with the title “On the Prince breaking with his Party.”

Page 116. The Triumph of the Whale.

The Examiner, March 15, 1812.  Reprinted in The Poetical Recreations of “The Champion," signed R. et R., with a note stating that it had not appeared in The Champion, but was collected with the other pieces by the author’s request.

The subject of the verses was, of course, the first gentleman in Europe. The Examiner was never over-nice in its treatment of the prince, and it was in the same year, 1812, that Leigh Hunt, the editor, and his brother, the printer, of the paper were prosecuted for the article styling him a “libertine” and the “companion of gamblers and demireps” (which appeared the week following Lamb’s poem), and were condemned to imprisonment for it.  Lamb’s lines came very little short of expressing equally objectionable criticisms; but verse is often privileged.  Thelwall—­and Lamb—­showed some courage in reprinting the lines in 1822, when the prince had become king.  Talfourd relates that Lamb was in the habit of checking harsh comments on the prince by others with the smiling remark, “I love my Regent.”

In Galignani’s 1828 edition of Byron this piece was attributed to his lordship.

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Page 118. St. Crispin to Mr. Gifford.

The Examiner, October 3 and 4, 1819.  Reprinted in The Poetical Recreations of “The Champion," 1822.

William Gifford (1756-1826), editor of the Quarterly Review, had been apprenticed to a cobbler.  Lamb had an old score against him on account of his editorial treatment of Lamb’s review of Wordsworth’s Excursion, in 1814, and other matters (see note to “Letter to Southey,” Vol.  I.).  Writing to the Olliers, on the publication of his Works, June 18, 1818, Lamb says, in reference to this sonnet:  “I meditate an attack upon that Cobler Gifford, which shall appear immediately after any favourable mention which S. [Southey] may make in the Quarterly.  It can’t in decent gratitude appear before.”  When the sonnet was printed in the Examiner it purported to have reference to the Quarterly’s treatment of Shelley’s Revolt of Islam, which treatment Leigh Hunt was then exposing in a series of articles.