Note 255 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY (continued 2)

Lieut.-Colonel Molesworth Phillips, whose career links Dr. Johnson to Charles Lamb, was the companion of Captain Cook on his last voyage. His marriage in 1782 to Susannah Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. Charles Burney, and sister of Fanny Burney, brought him into the Johnson set. He escorted Miss Burney to Westminster Hall to hear Warren Hastings on his defence. Lamb, recalling his old whist-playing friends in his “Letter of Elia to Robert Southey,” names him as “the high-minded associate of Cook, the veteran Colonel, with his lusty heart still sending cartels of defiance to old Time.” He died in 1832.