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Canon 97characterized English poetry translation at least since Pope (Quinlan1941; Perkin 1989:90, 120–121, 240). 17 Lamb’s first-hand knowledge ofthe casual sexual morality among the Whig aristocracy may have madehim more receptive to the emergent conservatism in English culture,since there can be no doubt that he contributed to it. His work in thetheatre included an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens (Lamb1816), whose goal, he announced in an “Advertisement,” was “torestore Shakespeare to the stage, with no other omissions than such asthe refinement of manners has rendered necessary.” Lamb omitted thisdialogue, for example, between Timon and “the churlish Philosopher”Apemantus:Tim.Apem.Tim.Apem.Tim.Apem.Wilt thou dine with me, Apemantus?No; I eat not lords.And thou shouldst, thou’dst anger ladies.O they eat lords; so they come by great bellies.That’s a lascivious apprehension.So thou apprehend’st it; take it for thy labour.(Shakespeare 1959:I.i.203–208)Lamb treated Shakespeare just as he did Catullus, expurgating thetext of any coarse language, and his like-minded contemporariesapproved of his work, with one commentator observing that “muchis omitted in the dialogue, and generally with propriety” (Genest1832:584). Lamb saw no contradiction between professing liberalismas a Whig politician and censoring canonical literary texts. Hefollowed what David Cecil has called the “canons of Whigorthodoxy. All believed in ordered liberty, low taxation and theenclosure of land; all disbelieved in despotism and democracy”(Cecil 1965:7). 18Lamb’s calculated omission of the carnivalesque in his literaryprojects must be taken as another gesture of social superiority by amember of the hegemonic class. Lamb’s elitism, however, was couchedin terms that were belletristic instead of social: he viewed a poetrytranslation or a theatrical adaptation as a refined form ofentertainment, an exercise in aesthetic appreciation performed duringperiods of leisure, often in private. He prefaced his Catullus translationwith a poem entitled “Reflections before Publication,” wherein hepresented his work, not as an engaged act of cultural restoration orcanon revision, but as the “pleasing” diversion of an amateur who isnow contemplating whether to share it with others: