It is natural, though they were written so long afterwards, to take the “Notes on the Garrick Plays” with these other forerunners and suggesters; nor do I think that so much of the “first sprightly running” is lost as has sometimes been thought. How Lamb-like and how pleasant is the phrase on Day’s quaint _Parliament of Bees_—“the very air seems replete with humming and buzzing melodies.” (Most obvious, of course: only that nobody had _met_ it before!) And the imploration to Novello to set the song from Peele’s _Arraignment_; and the fine and forcible plea for the minor Elizabethans in the note to _The Two Angry Women of Abingdon_ (a play, by the way, every fresh reading of which makes one more thoroughly agree with Lamb). The fewness and slightness of these notes should not be allowed to obscure their quality. [Sidenote: _Miscellaneous Essays._] It was seldom that the bee-like nature of Lamb’s own genius could settle long on a single flower; and his regular “studies” are few, and not always of his very best. The actual state of the paper on _The Excursion_, after its mangling by Gifford, illustrates the wisdom of that editorial counsel, “Always keep a copy,” which the contributor (alas! we are all guilty) doth so unwisely neglect; and the two best that we have among the miscellaneous essays are those on Wither and on Defoe’s secondary novels. It is difficult to say which is the better: but the singular unlikeness of the two subjects (except that both Wither and Defoe are eminently _homely_) shows what I presume Canon Ainger meant by the “versatility” of the critic’s genius. Both are admirable, but most characteristically “promiscuous.” The Defoe piece avowedly gives stray notes; but the “Wither,” though it has a beginning, has very little middle, and no end at all. [Sidenote: Elia.]