CHARLES LAMB AND THE "SPECTATOR." Pro Tin EDITOR OF TEE
" SPECTATOR."1 SIR,--Charles Lamb's only known contribution to the Spectator has been (hitherto) the very interesting letter, in his best manner, On "Shakespeare's Improvers," which was Printed on November 2'2nd, 1828, with reference to Kean's performance of Nahum Tate's Lear at Covent Garden. his criticism, discovered first by the late Alexander Ireland, is included in the notes to Canon Ainger's edition of _Lamb. The letter comments caustically upon the revised versions of King Lear by Nahum Tate ; of Coraganus, by the same hand ; of Timon of Athens, by Thomas Shadwell ; and of Macbeth, by Sir William Davenant ; and I have just had proof that Lamb himself set some store by his criticism, in the circumstance that he cut out the letter from the Spectator and pasted it, among others of his and his friends' articles, in an album kept for that purpose. The letter on "Shakespeare's Improvers" was' not, however, Lamb's only contribution to the Spectator's correspondence columns. In turning over the early years, I have come upon a couple of his notes, one forming a kind of postscript to the other, which were printed in the issue of July 24th, 1830. These, I believe, have not previously been identified. They are not of any particular value, except in embodying yet another reminiscence of Lamb's Christ's Hospital days ; but it is difficult for even the slightest production of his pen to avoid being interesting. The notes run thus :—
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