Page 44, line 26. _My friend A._ Probably William Ayrton (1777-1818),
the musical critic, one of the Burneys' whist-playing set, and a
friend and correspondent of Lamb's. See the musical rhyming letter to
him from Lamb, May 17, 1817.
Page 47, line 5. _My friend, Nov----_. Vincent Novello (1781-1861),
the organist, the father of Mrs. Cowden Clarke, and a great friend of
Lamb.
Page 47, footnote. Another friend of Vincent Novello's uses the same
couplet (from Watt's _Divine Songs for Children_, Song XXVIII.,
"For the Lord's Day, Evening") in the description of glees by the
old cricketers at the Bat and Ball on Broad Halfpenny Down, near
Hambledon--I refer to John Nyren, author of _The Young Cricketer's
Tutor_, 1833. There is no evidence that Lamb and Nyren ever met, but
one feels that they ought to have done so, in Novello's hospitable
rooms.
Page 48, line 3. _Lutheran beer_. Edmund Ollier, the son of Charles
Ollier, the publisher of Lamb's _Works_, 1818, in his reminiscences of
Lamb, prefixed to one edition of _Elia_, tells this story: "Once at a
musical party at Leigh Hunt's, being oppressed with what to him was
nothing but a prolonged noise ... he said--'If one only had a pot of
porter, one might get through this.' It was procured for him and he
weathered the Mozartian storm."