There wasn't any sneaking little brag and snobbishness in 'em.

" It was childish brag, but I think I must have delivered it with some spirit, for I saw approbation in his eye.

Truly, as the orator said: 'The bold words I have spoken from this place would be nothing but the emptiest brag and the coward's boast, if I flinched now in the day of battle'.

" Writing to William and Dorothy Wordsworth on September 28, 1805, Lamb remarked regarding his literary plans:"Sometimes I think of a farcebut hitherto all schemes have gone off,an idle brag or two of an evening vaporing out of a pipe, and going off in the morningbut now I have bid farewell to my 'Sweet Enemy' Tobacco, as you will see in my next page, I perhaps shall set soberly to work.