io* s. i. JAN. 23, low.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
61
LOiVDOX, SATURDAY, JANUARY !3, 130'*.
CONTENTS. -No. 4.
NOTES : Lamb, Coleridge, and Mr. May, 61 St. Margaret's Churchyard, Westminster, 62 "Squaw": "Mahala," 64 Weather on 25 January Smothering Hydrophobia Patients Charles I. : Historical Letter, 65 Mistletoe in Church, 66.
QUERIES : Thomas Stradling Sir Henry Chauncy, 66 St. Agnes, Haddington Picture by Frith "Lost in a convent's solitary gloom" Rev. C. E. Manning Werdens Abbey Cardigan Surname Eev. Obadiah Denman Samuel Wilderspin Inscription on Statue of James II. William Willie Forest Family Frost and its Forms, 67 Shelley's Mother British Embassy in Paris Robert Morris Flesh and Shamble Meats J. W. Dornford Mimes of Herondas Pepys's ' Diary ' : a Reference, 68.
REPLIES : Madame du Deffand's Letters, 68 Excom- munication of Louis XIV. Epitaph Heber's ' Palestine,' 69 Sadler's Wells Play Churchwardens' Accounts Topography of Ancient London" Jeer " " Little Mary " "Welsh rabbit" St. Bridget's Bower, 70 -Cardinals and Crimson Robes Earliest Playbill "Owl-light " Castle Society of Musick, 71 St. Dials Bishop Hall, of Bristol Ash : Place-name Brightlingsea -. its Deputy Mayor English Accentuation Cromwell buried in Red Lion Square, 72 Capsicum- Bishop White Kennett's Father Flaying Alive, 73 Vicissitudes of Language " God " : its Etymology, 74 Marlowe and Shakespeare Candlemas Gills" Coup de Jarnac " " Sit loose to " Marriage Registers" Heardlome " : " Heech "Japanese Cards, 75 Lorenzo da Pavia Shakespeare's " Virtue of necessity" King Edgar's Blazon " Going the round" : ' Roundhouse," 76 Sleeping King Arthur Little Wild Street Chapel" Red rag to a bull " Euchre, 77.
NOTES ON BOOKS :-Mantzius's 'History of Theatrical Art ' ' New English Dictionary ' Fenn's ' Memoir of B. F. Stevens ' Oxford Miniature Shakespeare Minia- ture Series of Musicians Clergy Directory Chart of Oxford Printing.
LAMB, COLERIDGE, AND MR. MAY.
1. THE earliest of Charles Lamb's extant
letters it is dated 27 May, 1796, and is
addressed to Coleridge at Bristol opens
with an allusion that has puzzled the editors.
"Dear Coleridge," writes Lamb, "make your-
self perfectly easy about May. I paid his
bill when I sent your clothes Give your-
self no further concern about it. The money would be superfluous to me if I had it." Who was May ? Canon Ainger's note ignores the question, while his index confounds the May of Letter i. with Southey's friend and correspondent John May, with whom, how- ever, we know that Lamb did not become acquainted until, in the summer of 1797, the two met under Southey's roof at Burton, near Christ Church, Hampshire. Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in his pleasant off-hand fashion, tells us that the bill Lamb refers to was "a tailor's account for 151." "It will, 1 ' he adds, " be mentioned again." Lamb does, indeed, revert to the transaction more than once, only, it need hardly be said, to make light of it, and to repudiate the notion of repay- ment. The amount of the bill Mr. Hazlitt apparently arrives at through the assump- tion (probably correct) that it is to this
rather than to some subsequent transaction
that Lamb refers in the letter to Coleridge
dated 11 October, 1802, when he writes :
"As to the fantastic debt of I5L, I'll think
you were dreaming, and not trouble myself
seriously to attend to you." Lastly, Mr.
William Macdonald, the latest editor of the
' Letters,' merely observes here that " Mr. May
seems to have been a tailor." Such is the
modest total of editorial illumination vouch-
safed to us on this obscure point. Let us
collect the several references in the letters
to May and his bill, and see if we cannot in
this way obtain a clue to his identity.
2. In Letter ii. undated, but probably written on 31 May, 1796 Lamb writes : " I have one more favour to beg of you, that you never mention Mr. May's affair in any sort, much less think of repaying. Are we not flocci - nauci- what-d ' ye - call-'em-ists 1 "* (For another instance of this curious word, which is adapted from Shenstone, and signifies " men indifferent to money," see Letter xx. p. 62, vol. i., ed. Ainger, 1888.)
3. In the same letter later on Lamb writes : "I conjure you, dream not that I will ever think of being repaid ; the very word is gall- ing to the ears."
4. Letter ix., 3 October, 1796 : "Do not for ever offend rne by talking of sending me cash. Sincerely, and on my soul, we do not want it " (ibid., p. 37).
5. Letter xciii., 11 October, 1802: "As to the fantastic debt of 15i., I '11 think," &c. I have quoted this reference in full already (ibid., p. 188).
So far we seem to be as much as ever in the dark concerning May. But a passage in Letter xxviii. (24 June, 1797) furnishes a glimmer of light. Lamb writes : "I was a very patient hearer and docile scholar in our winter evening meetings at Mr. May's ; was I not, Col. 1 What I have owed to thee, my heart can ne'er forget." This passage, the closing sentence of which is taken from a sonnet by Bowles entitled ' Oxford Re- visited ' (line 14), reminds us at once of "the little smoky room at the 'Salutation and Cat,' where we [to wit, Lamb and Coleridge] have sat together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with Poesy" (Letter iii., ibid., p. 15) of "those old suppers
at our old ["Salutation"] Inn, when
life was fresh and topics exhaustless, and you first kindled in me, if not the power, yet the love of poetry, and beauty, and kindliness " ('Works,' 1818, ' Dedication to Coleridge ').
[* "Flocci nauci nihili" is derived, of course,
from the ' Eton Syntax.']
