According to Mrs. Baron-Wilson's _Memoirs of (Miss Mellon) Harriet, Duchess of St. Albans_, Lamb was allowed to cast "Mr. H----" himself. Miss Mellon played the heroine. The Lambs sat near the orchestra with Hazlitt and Crabb Robinson, and the house was well salted with friendly clerks from the East India House and the South-Sea House. The prologue went capitally; and all was well with the play until the name of Hogsflesh was pronounced. Then disapproval set in in a storm of hisses, in which, Crabb Robinson tells us, Lamb joined heartily, standing on his seat to do so. In a report of the first night of "Mr. H----" in _Monthly Literary Recreations_ for December, 1806, we read that on the secret of the name being made public "all interest vanished, the audience were disgusted, and the farce went on to its very conclusion almost unheard, amidst the contending clamours of 'Silence,' 'Hear! hear!' and 'Off! off! off!'" Writing to Wordsworth on the next day Lamb told the story:--"Mr. H---- came out last night and failed. I had many fears; the subject was not substantial enough. John Bull must have solider fare than a _Letter_. We are pretty stout about it, have had plenty of condoling friends, but after all, we had rather it should have succeeded. You will see the Prologue in most of the Morning Papers. It was received with such shouts as I never witness'd to a Prologue. It was attempted to be encored. How hard! a thing I did merely as a task, because it was wanted--and set no great store by; and Mr. H.!! The quantity of friends we had in the house my brother and I being in Public Offices &c. was astonishing--but they yielded at length to a few hisses--"a hundred hisses--damn the word, I write it like kisses--how different--a hundred hisses outweigh 1000 claps. The former come more directly from the Heart. Well, 'tis withdrawn and there is an end. Better Luck to us." Writing to Sarah Stoddart, Lamb put the case thus:--"Mary is a little cut at the ill success of 'Mr. H.,' which came out last night, and _failed_. I know you'll be sorry, but never mind. We are determined not to be cast down. I am going to leave off tobacco, and then we must thrive. A smoking man must write smoky farces." Thereafter Lamb's attitude to "Mr. H----" was always one of humorous resignation. Lamb should have chosen a better, by which I mean a worse, name than Hogsflesh. As a matter of fact a great number of persons had become quite accustomed to the asperities of Hogsflesh, not only from the famous cricketer of that name, one of the pioneers of the game, but also from the innkeeper at Worthing. Indeed an old rhyme current at the end of the eighteenth century anticipated some of Lamb's humour, for the two principal landlords of Worthing, which was just then beginning to be a fashionable resort, were named Hogsflesh and Bacon, leading to the quatrain:--