A thief, on dreary Bagshot's heath well known, Was fond of making others' goods his own; _Meum_ was never thought of, nor was _Tuum_, But everything with him was counted _Suum_. At length each gets his own, and no one grieves; The rope his neck, Jack Ketch his clothes receives: His body to dissecting knife has gone; Himself to Orcus: well--each gets his own. The English epigram, which was signed J.A. Hessey, was a rhyming version of a story which Lamb was fond of telling. Three, at least, of his friends relate the story in their recollections of him: Mrs. Mathews in her life of her husband; Leigh Hunt in _The Companion_; and De Quincey in _Fraser's Magazine_. The incident possibly occurred to Lamb when as a boy--or little more--he stayed at Margate about 1790. Lamb must have written Merchant Taylors' epigrams before, for in 1803, in a letter to Godwin about writing to order, he speaks of having undertaken, three or four times, a schoolboy copy of verses for Merchant Taylors' boys at a guinea a copy, and refers to the trouble and vexation the work was to him. Writing to Southey on May 10, 1830, Lamb said, at the end:--"Perhaps an epigram (not a very happy-gram) I did for a school-boy yesterday may amuse. I pray Jove he may not get a flogging for any false quantity; but 'tis, with one exception, the only Latin verses I have made for forty years, and I did it 'to order.' "CUIQUE SUUM "Adsciscit sibi divitias et opes alienas Fur, rapiens, spolians quod mihi, quod-que tibi, Proprium erat, temnens haec verba, meum-que tuum-que Omne suum est: tandem Cui-que Suum tribuit. Dat resti collum; restes, vah! carnifici dat; Sese Diabolo, sic bene; Cuique Suum." Page 123. _On "The Literary Gazette"_. _The Examiner_, August 22, 1830. This epigram, consisting only of the first four lines, slightly altered, and headed "Rejected Epigrams, 6"-evidently torn from a paper containing a number of verses (the figure 7 is just visible underneath it)--is in the British Museum among the letters left by Vincent Novello. It is inscribed, "In handwriting of Mr. Charles Lamb." The same collection contains a copy, in Mrs. Cowden Clarke's handwriting, of the sonnet to Mrs. Jane Towers (see page 50). _The Literary Gazette_ was William Jerdan's paper, a poor thing, which Lamb had reason to dislike for the attack it made upon him when _Album Verses_ was published (see note on page 331). _The Examiner_ began the attack on August 14, 1830. All the epigrams are signed T.A. This means that if Lamb wrote the above, he wrote all; which is not, I think, likely. I do not reproduce them, the humour of punning upon the name of the editor of the _Literary Gazette_ being a little outmoded.