* * * * * Page 113. _To D.A._ From Lamb's Album. Dorothy Asbury, the wife of the doctor. Page 113. _To Louisa Morgan._ From Lamb's Album. Louisa Morgan was probably the daughter of Coleridge's friend, John Morgan, of Calne, in Wiltshire, with whom the Lambs stayed in 1817--the same Morgan--"Morgan demigorgon"--who ate walnuts better than any man Lamb knew, and munched cos-lettuce like a rabbit (see letters to Coleridge in August, 1814). Southey and Lamb each allowed John Morgan £10 a year in his old age and adversity, beginning with 1819. Page 113. _To Sarah James of Beguildy._ Sarah James was Mary Lamb's nurse, and the sister of the Mrs. Parsons with whom she lived during the last years of her life. Miss James was the daughter of the rector of Beguildy, in Shropshire. The verses are reprinted from _My Lifetime_ by the late John Hollingshead, who was the great-nephew of Miss James and Mrs. Parsons. * * * * * Page 114. _To Emma Button._ Included in a letter from Lamb to John Aitken, editor of _The Cabinet_, July 5, 1825. Page 114. _Written upon the cover of a blotting book. The Mirror,_ May 7, 1836. Identified by Mr. Walter Jerrold. First collected by Mr. Thomas Hutchinson. * * * * * Page 115. POLITICAL AND OTHER EPIGRAMS. Lamb was not a politician, but he had strong--almost passionate--prejudices against certain statesmen and higher persons, which impelled him now and then to sarcastic verse. The earliest examples in this vein that can be identified are two quatrains from the _Morning Post_ in January, 1802, printed on page 115, and the epigram on Sir James Mackintosh in _The Albion_, printed on the same page, to which Lamb refers in the _Elia_ essay on "Newspapers Thirty-five Years Ago" (see Vol. II.). Until a file of _The Albion_ turns up we shall never know how active Lamb's pen was at that time. The next belong to the year 1812--in _The Examiner_ (see page 116)--and we then leap another seven years or so until 1819-1820, Lamb's busiest period as a caustic critic of affairs--in _The Examiner_, possibly the _Morning Chronicle_, and principally in _The Champion_. After 1820, however, he returned to this vein very seldom, and then with less bitterness and depth of feeling. "The Royal Wonders," in _The Times_ for August 10, 1830 (see page 122), and "Lines Suggested by a Sight of Waltham Cross," in the _Englishman's Magazine_, September, 1831 (written, however, some years earlier), on page 121, being his latest efforts that we know of. Of course there must be many other similar productions to which we have no clue--the old _Morning Post_ days doubtless saw many an epigram that cannot now be definitely claimed for Lamb--but those that are preserved here sufficiently show how feelingly Lamb could hate and how trenchantly he could chastise. Others that seem to me likely to be Lamb's I could