fishmonger, opened the gaming-house which bore his name and amassed a fortune of upwards of a million.—­Semele (Stanza XXI.), whose lightest wish Jupiter had sworn to grant, was treacherously induced to express the desire that Jupiter would visit her with the divine pomp in which he approached his lawful wife Juno.  He did so, and she was consumed by his lightning and thunderbolts.—­The bard of Stanza XXV. is, of course, Virgil.

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Page 138.  Prologues and Epilogues.

Writing to Sarah Stoddart concerning Godwin’s “Faulkener” Mary Lamb remarked:  “Prologues and Epilogues will be his [Charles’s] death.”

Page 138. Epilogue to “Antonio."

Had Lamb not sent this epilogue to Manning in the letter of December 13, 1800, we should have no copy of it; for Godwin, by Lamb’s advice, did not print it with the play.  Writing to Godwin two days before, Lamb remarked:-"I have been plotting how to abridge the Epilogue.  But I cannot see that any lines can be spared, retaining the connection, except these two, which are better out: 

      “Why should I instance, &c.,
      The sick man’s purpose, &c.,

and then the following line must run thus,

      “The truth by an example best is shown.”

See lines 16, 17 and 18.

Godwin’s “Antonio,” produced at Drury Lane on December 13, 1800, was a failure.  Many years afterwards Lamb told the story of the unlucky first night (see “The Old Actors” in Appendix to Vol.  II. of this edition).  Godwin, its author, was, of course, William Godwin, the philosopher (1756-1836).  Later Lamb wrote the prologue to another of his plays (see page 140 and note).

Lines 35 and 36. Suett ...  Bannister.  Richard Suett (1755-1805) and Jack Bannister (1760-1836), two famous comedians of that day.  Line 62. “Pizarro.”  Sheridan’s patriotic melodrama, produced May 24, 1799, at Drury Lane.

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Page 140. Prologue to “Faulkener."

William Godwin’s tragedy “Faulkener” was produced at Drury Lane, December 16, 1807, with some success.  Lamb’s letters to Godwin of September 9 and 17, 1801, suggest that he had a share in the framing of the plot.  Later the play was taken in hand by Thomas Holcroft and made more dramatic.

According to Godwin’s preface, 1807, the story was taken from the 1745 edition of Defoe’s Roxana, which contains the episode of Susannah imagining herself to be Roxana’s daughter and throwing herself in her mother’s way.  Godwin transformed the daughter into a son.  Lamb, however, seems to have believed this episode to be in the first edition, 1724, and afterwards to have been removed at the entreaty of Southerne, Defoe’s friend (see Lamb’s letters to Walter Wilson, Defoe’s biographer, of December 16, 1822, and February 24, 1823).  But it is in reality the first edition which lacks