“In digressing, in dilating, in passing from subject to subject, he appeared to me to float in air, to slide on ice. He told me in confidence (going along) that he should have preached two sermons before he accepted the situation at Shrewsbury, one on Infant Baptism, the other on the Lord’s Supper, showing that he could not administer either, which would have effectually disqualified him for the object in view. I observed that he continually crossed me on the way by shifting from one side of the footpath to the other. This struck me as an odd movement; but I did not at that time connect it with any instability of purpose or involuntary change of principle, as I have done since. He seemed unable to keep on in a straight line. He spoke slightingly of Hume (whose ‘Essay on Miracles’ he said was stolen from an objection started in one of South’s sermons—Credat Judæus Apella!). I was not very much pleased at this account of Hume, for I had just been reading, with infinite relish, that completest of all metaphysical choke-pears, his ‘Treatise on Human Nature,’ to which the ‘Essays,’ in point of scholastic, subtilty and close reasoning, are mere elegant trifling, light summer reading. Coleridge even denied the excellence of Hume’s general style, which I think betrayed a want of taste or candour. He however made me amends by the manner in which he spoke of Berkeley. He dwelt particularly on his ‘Essay on Vision,’ as a masterpiece of analytical reasoning. So it undoubtedly is. He was exceedingly angry with Dr. Johnson for striking the stone with his foot, in allusion to this author’s ‘Theory of Matter and Spirit,’ and saying, ‘Thus I confute him, sir.’ Coleridge drew a parallel (I don’t know how he brought about the connexion) between Bishop Berkeley and Tom Paine. He said the one was an instance of a subtle, the other of an acute mind, than which no two things could be more distinct. The one was a shop-boy’s quality, the other the characteristic of a philosopher. He considered Bishop Butler as a true philosopher, a profound and conscientious thinker, a genuine reader of nature and of his own mind. He did not speak of his ‘Analogy,’ but of his ‘Sermons at the Rolls’ Chapel,’ of which I had never heard. Coleridge somehow always contrived to prefer the unknown to the known. In this instance he was right. The ‘Analogy’ is a tissue of sophistry, of wire-drawn, theological special-pleading; the ‘Sermons’ (with the Preface to them) are in a fine vein of deep, matured reflection, a candid appeal to our observation of human nature, without pedantry and without bias. I told Coleridge I had written a few remarks, and was sometimes foolish enough to believe that I had made a discovery on the same subject (the ‘Natural Disinterestedness of the Human Mind’)—and I tried to explain my view of it to Coleridge, who listened with great willingness, but I did not succeed in making myself understood. I sat down to the task shortly afterwards for the twentieth time, got new pens and paper, determined to make clear work of it, wrote a few meagre sentences in the skeleton-style of a mathematical demonstration, stopped half-way down the second page; and, after trying in vain to pump up any words, images, notions, apprehensions, facts, or observations, from that gulf of abstraction in which 1 had plunged myself for four or five years preceding, gave up the attempt as labour in vain, and shed tears of helpless despondency on the blank unfinished paper. . . . .

“If I had the quaint muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a ‘Sonnet to the Koad between Wem and Shrewsbury,’ and immortalise every step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had ears, and that Harmer Hill stooped with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed! I remember but one other topic of discourse in this walk. He mentioned Paley, praised the naturalness and clearness of his style, but condemned his sentiments; thought him a mere time-serving casuist, and said that ‘the fact of his work on “Moral and Political Philosophy” being made a text-book in our universities was a disgrace to the national character.’ We parted at the six-mile stone; and I returned homeward, pensive but much pleased. I had met with unexpected notice from a person whom I believed to have been prejudiced against me. ‘Kind and affable to me had been his condescension, and should be honoured ever with suitable regard.’ He was the first poet I had known, and he certainly answered to that inspired name. I had heard a great deal of his powers of conversation, and was not disappointed. In fact, I never met with anything at all like them, either before or since. I could easily credit the accounts which were circulated of his holding forth to a large party of ladies and gentlemen, an evening or two before, on the Berkeleian Theory, when he made the whole material universe look like a transparency of fine words; and another story (which I believe he has somewhere told himself) of his being asked to a party at Birmingham, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after dinner on a sofa, where the company found him to their no small surprise, which was increased to wonder when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes, looked about him, and launched into a three hours’ description of the third heaven, of which he had had a dream. . . .

“On my way back I had a sound in my ears—it was the voice of Fancy: I had a light before me—it was the face of Poetry. The one still lingers there, the other has not quitted my side! Coleridge in truth met me half-way on the ground of philosophy, or I should not have been won over to his imaginative creed. I had an uneasy, pleasurable sensation all the time, till I was to visit him. During those months the chill breath of winter gave me a welcoming; the vernal air was balm and inspiration to me. The golden sunsets, the silver star of evening, lighted me on my way to new hopes and prospects. I was to visit Coleridge in the Spring. This circumstance was never absent from my thoughts, and mingled with all my feelings. I wrote to him at the time proposed, and received an answer postponing my intended visit for a week or two, but very cordially urging me to complete my promise then. This delay did not damp, but rather increased my ardour. In the mean time I went to Llangollen Vale, by way of initiating myself in the mysteries of natural scenery; and I must say I was enchanted with it. I had been reading Coleridge’s description of England, in his fine ‘Ode on the Departing Year,’ and I applied it, con amore, to the objects before me. That valley was to me (in a manner) the cradle of a new existence: in the river that winds through it, my spirit was baptized in the waters of Helicon!

“I returned home, and soon after set out on my journey with unworn heart and untried feet. My way lay through Worcester and Gloucester, and by Upton, where I thought of Tom Jones and the adventure of the muff. I remember getting completely wet through one day, and stopping at an inn (I think it was at Tewkesbury), where I sat up all night to read ‘Paul and Virginia.’ Sweet were the showers in early youth that drenched my body, and sweet the drops of pity that fell upon the books I read! I recollect a remark of Coleridge’s upon this very book,—that nothing could show the gross indelicacy of French manners and the entire corruption of their imagination more strongly than the behaviour of the heroine in the last fatal scene, who turns away from a person on board the sinking vessel, that offers to save her life, because he has thrown off his clothes to assist him in swimming. Was this a time to think of such a circumstance? I once hinted to Wordsworth, as we were sailing in his boat on Grasmere lake, that I thought he had borrowed the idea of his ‘Poems on the Naming of Places’ from the local inscriptions of the same kind in ‘Paul and Virginia.’ He did not own the obligation, and stated some distinction without a difference, in defence of his claim to originality. Any the slightest variation would be sufficient for this purpose in his mind; for whatever he added or altered would inevitably be worth all that any one else had done, and contain the marrow of the sentiment. I was still two days before the time fixed for my arrival, for I had taken care to set out early enough. I stopped these two days at Bridgewater, and when I was tired of sauntering on the banks of its muddy river, returned to the inn, and read ‘Camilla.’

“I arrived, and was well received. The country about Nether-Stowey is beautiful, green and hilly, and near the sea-shore. I saw it but the other day, after an interval of twenty years, from a hill near Taunton. How was the map of my life spread out before me, as the map of the country lay at my feet! In the afternoon Coleridge took me over to All-Foxden,* a romantic

* Two miles from Stowey.

“Thus I passed three weeks at Nether-Stowey and in the neighbourhood, generally devoting the afternoons to a delightful chat in an arbour made of bark by the poet’s friend Tom Poole, sitting under two fine elm trees, and listening to the bees humming round us, while we quaffed our flip. It was agreed, among other things, that we should make a jaunt down the Bristol Channel, as far as Linton. We set off together on foot, Coleridge, John Chester, and I. This Chester was a native of Nether-Stowey, one of those who were attracted to Coleridge’s discourse as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time to the sound of a brass pan. He ‘followed in the chace, like a dog who hunts, not like one that made up the cry.’ He had on a brown cloth coat, boots, and corduroy breeches, was low in stature, bow-legged, had a drag in his walk like a drover, which he assisted by a hazel switch, and kept on a sort of trot by the side of Coleridge, like a running footman by a state coach, that he might not lose a syllable or sound that fell from Coleridge’s lips. He told me his private opinion, that Coleridge was a wonderful man. He scarcely opened his lips, much less offered an opinion the whole way; yet of the three, had I to choose during that journey, I would be John Chester. He afterwards followed Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantean philosophers were puzzled how to bring him under any of their categories. When he sat down at table with his idol, John’s felicity was complete. . . .

“We passed Dunster on our right, a small town between the brow of a hill and the sea. I remember eyeing it wistfully as it lay below us: contrasted with the woody scene around, it looked as clear, as pure, as embrowned and ideal, as any landscape I have seen since of Gaspar Poussin’s or Domenichino’s. We had a long day’s march—(our feet kept time to the echoes of Coleridge’s tongue)—through Minehead and by the Blue Anchor, and on to Linton, which we did not reach till near midnight, and where we had some difficulty in making a lodgment. We however knocked the people of the house up at last, and we were repaid for our apprehensions and fatigue by some excellent rashers of fried bacon and eggs. The view in coming along had been splendid. We walked for miles and miles on dark-brown heaths overlooking the Channel, with the Welsh hills beyond, and at times descended into little sheltered valleys close by the seaside, with a smuggler’s face scowling by us; and then had to ascend conical hills with a path winding up through a coppice to a barren top, like a monk’s shaven crown, from one of which I pointed out to Coleridge’s notice the bare masts of a vessel on the very edge of the horizon and within the red-orbed disk of the setting sun, like his own spectre-ship in the ‘Ancient Mariner.’ At Linton the character of the sea-coast becomes more marked and rugged. There is a place called the Valley of Rocks (I suspect this was only the poetical name for it), bedded among precipices overhanging the sea, with rocky caverns beneath, into which the waves dash, and where the seagull for ever wheels its screaming flight. On the tops of these are huge stones thrown transverse, as if an earthquake had tossed them there, and behind these is a fretwork of perpendicular rocks, something like the Giant’s Causeway. A thunder-storm came on while we were at the inn, and Coleridge was running out bareheaded to enjoy the commotion of the elements in the Valley of Rocks; but as, if in spite, the clouds only muttered a few angry sounds, and let fall a few refreshing drops. Coleridge told me that he and Wordsworth were to have made this place the scene of a prose tale, which was to have been in the manner of, but far superior to, the ‘Death of Abel,’ but they had relinquished the design.

“In the morning of the second day we breakfasted luxuriously in an old-fashioned parlour, on tea, toast, eggs, and honey, in the very sight of the beehives from which it had been taken and a garden full of thyme and wild flowers that had produced it. On this occasion Coleridge spoke of Virgil’s ‘Georgics,’ but not well. I do not think he had much feeling for the classical or elegant. It was in this room that we found a little worn-out copy of the ‘Seasons,’ lying in a window-seat, on which Coleridge exclaimed, ‘That is true fame!’ He said Thomson was a great poet rather than a good one; his style was as meretricious as his thoughts were natural. He spoke of Cowper as the best modern poet. He said the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ were an experiment about to be tried by him and Wordsworth, to see how far the public taste would endure poetry written in a more natural and simple style than had hitherto been attempted; totally discarding the artifices of poetical diction, and making use only of such words as had probably been common in the most ordinary language since the days of Henry II. Some comparison was introduced between Shakspeare and Milton. He said ‘he hardly knew which to prefer. Shakspeare seemed to him a mere stripling in the art; he was as tall and as strong, with infinitely more activity than Milton, but he never appeared to have come to man’s estate; or if he had, he would not have been a man, but a monster.’ He spoke with contempt of Gray, and with intolerance of Pope. He did not like the versification of the latter. He observed that ‘the ears of these couplet-writers might be charged with having short memories, that could not retain the harmony of whole passages.’ He thought little of Junius as a writer; he had a dislike of Dr. Johnson; and a much higher opinion of Burke, as an orator and politician, than of Fox or Pitt. He however thought him very inferior in richness of style and imagery to some of our elder prose writers, par-ticularly Jeremy Taylor. He liked Richardson, but not Fielding; nor could I get him to enter into the merits of ‘Caleb Williams.’* In short, he was profound and discriminating with respect to those authors whom he liked, and where he gave his judgment fair play; capricious, perverse, and prejudiced in his antipathies and distastes. We loitered on the ‘ribbed sea-sands,’ in such talk as this a whole morning, and I recollect met with a curious seaweed, of which John Chester told us the country name! A fisherman gave Coleridge an account of a boy that had been drowned the day before, and that they had tried to save him at the risk of their own lives. He said ‘he did not know how it was that they ventured, but, sir, we have a nature towards one another.” This expression, Coleridge remarked to me, was a fine illustration of that theory of disinterestedness which I (in common with Butler) had adopted. I broached to him an argument of mine to prove that likeness was not mere association of ideas. I said that the mark in the sand put one in mind of a man’s foot, not because it was part of a former impression of a man’s foot (for it was quite new), but because it was like the shape of a man’s foot. He assented to the justness of this distinction (which I

* He had no idea of pictures, of Claude or Raphael, and at, this time I had as little as he. He somewhere gives a striking account of the Cartoons at Pisa, by Buffamalco and others; of one in particular, where Death is seen in the air, brandishing his scythe, and the great and mighty of the earth shudder at his approach, while the beggars and the wretched kneel to him as their deliverer. He would of course understand so broad and fine a moral as this at any time.

The early and successful establishment of John Hazlitt in London as the member of a liberal profession was of considerable value to his brother, when it became a question, as it really did about 1803, of the latter coming up to town, and endeavouring to support himself by his own exertions.

His father was getting old, and had never been, nor was he ever likely to be, a rich man. The modest income which his duties brought him was sufficient for his own purposes, and his family was fortunately small. John had long since been in the way of earning his own livelihood, and only Peggy and William were at home.

I do not find that William fixed his abode in London permanently so early as 1803, however; but he was beginning to spend part of his time in town with his brother, living otherwise at Wem, as before.

It was during his stays at 12, Rathbone Place, that he made the acquaintance of two families, whose subsequent intimacy was destined to exercise a very large share of influence on his future career. These were the Stoddarts and the Lambs.

Dr. Stoddart and his sister Sarah were the only children of Lieutenant John Stoddart, R. N., a retired and disappointed navy man, who had inherited or acquired (I hardly know which) a small property near Salisbury, at a village called Winterslow. Lieutenant Stoddart lived at Salisbury upon his half-pay and the proceeds of his independence, and with him his daughter. His son had gone up to London, and become a student of the civil law. He and John Hazlitt were extreme Liberals in politics; and the late Dr. Charles Richardson used to say that he could remember Stoddart when he went all lengths in Radicalism, and wore the Phrygian cap. John Hazlitt never swerved from his faith, but Dr. Stoddart afterwards did.

In 1803 Dr. Stoddart was appointed, by the influence of Sir William Scott, king’s advocate at Malta, and upon his departure to that island his sister accompanied him on a visit.

Dr. Stoddart, through his friend John Hazlitt, knew the Lambs some time before the receipt of the Maltese appointment—how much before I have no present means of discovering.* The correspondence of Dr. Stoddart, if any such ever took place, with Charles and Mary Lamb, has not apparently been preserved; and it is only from the accidental existence of a series of letters,

* He was intimate, later on, with Dr. Dibdin, the bibliographer. He, Dibdin, and the late Sir Benjamin Brodie, were members of a club called The Lunatics.

Corydon Dowling turned out as ill as Corydon Turner and Corydon White had done before him; perhaps he did not like settlements. There is a large gap in the correspondence of Miss Lamb at this point, but not too large to mark appropriately the revolution which the next survivor of this interesting, and to me highly valuable series, discloses to view. William is once more the hero of the situation—the lover!

So it appears that at the date of this letter Miss Stoddart was regularly and finally engaged to my grandfather; that the latter was in London, and on visiting terms with Dr. Stoddart (now returned from Malta); and that John Hazlitt was pleased with the proposed union, and ready to put out his hand to the young couple.

At an early stage of the engagement the lover grew a less regular correspondent than his mistress could wish; which will scarcely be a subject of wonder, when it is known that he carried with him through life a detestation of letter-writing of every description. Miss Stoddart complained of his negligence to Miss Lamb, who sent the following explanation:—

It was as well that poor Miss Lamb’s “God bless you, and may you be happy together” should come to something at last, and should not be all waste benedicites.

My grandfather, in spite of Miss Lamb’s admonitions to the contrary, went down to Salisbury in the early part of February, 1808, and saw Miss Stoddart.

He had left his father’s, it seems, without saying whither he was bound, and had come up to town, where he saw the Lambs. He did not go to his brother’s this time, but took lodgings somewhere on his own account. On a Saturday afternoon he suddenly disappeared, and the Lambs did not know what had become of him. Meanwhile, Miss Stoddart had written to him, enclosing a drawing of Middleton Cottage, Winterslow, and had sent it, as usual, under cover to him at Mitre Court Buildings; and Miss Lamb, supposing that he had returned to Wem, forwarded it to him there. She at the same time wrote off to Miss Stoddart, to let her know what she had done:—

I find newspaper-work his mainstay during 1814 and 1815. He wrote regularly for the Chronicle, and occasionally for the Champion and Examiner. The review of Wordsworth’s ‘Excursion’ in the last is his.

Wordsworth had sent Lamb a copy of the poem, and one day, while Lamb was out, Martin Burney came and took the book away. My grandfather wanted the copy for his review, and had sent Martin in search of it. Lamb, when he found that the volume had disappeared, and learned the circumstances, was very much annoyed;* and my grandfather, understanding that he had taken offence, came to his rooms and “blew up” him and Mary well. “Blow up” is Lamb’s own word; and Lamb (in a letter to a friend) adds, that he supposed it would come to a breach. Which was, in fact, the case.

Mr. Hazlitt’s connection for a brief period with the Times newspaper had led to an acquaintance between him and the commercial editor of that journal, Lamb’s friend Alsager. At this time Alsager happened to be on the committee of the Surrey Institution,* and on Mr. Hazlitt intimating a sort of desire to resume the lecturing business, Alsager furnished him with a letter of introduction to the management. It was not that my grandfather had any reason to complain of his association with the press, for he continued to write in the Examiner, in the Champion, and in the Scots Magazine; and in January, 1818, he commenced a series of contributions to the ‘Yellow Dwarf,’† a new

* In the Blackfriars Road. It was afterwards worse known as the “Devil’s Pulpit;” and was the place where the notorious Carlile harangued his audiences. He was called, and I believe called himself, the “Devil’s Chaplain.”

† ‘The Yellow Dwarf,’ a “Weekly Miscellany. Price 4d. The first number appeared Jan. 3, 1818, and it lasted till May 23, 1818, extending to 21 numbers.

It was while Lamb was residing in Mitre Court Buildings that those Wednesday evenings of his were in their glory. Mr. Hazlitt has made himself their historiographer, and if he had not left upon record some account of these meetings of some of the choicest spirits of the day, all trace of them must have perished with those, who had the honour to be guests. In two of my grandfather’s papers, I find graphic pictures of these Wednesdays and Wednesday-men. There is a curious sketch in one of a little tilt between Coleridge and Holcroft, which must not be omitted, because my grandfather was, to a very slight degree, mixed up in it. It was thus, in Mr. Hazlitt’s own words:—“Coleridge was riding the high German horse, and demonstrating the ‘Categories of the Transcendental Philosophy’ to the author of the ‘Road to Ruin,’ who insisted on his knowledge of German and German metaphysics, having read the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ in the original. ‘My dear Mr. Holcroft,’ said Coleridge, in a tone of infinitely-provoking conciliation, ‘you really put me in mind of a sweet pretty German girl, about fifteen, that I met with in the Hartz Forest in Germany—and who one day, as I was reading the “Limits of the Knowable and the Unknowable,” the profoundest of all his works, with great attention, came behind my chair, and leaning over, said, “What, you read Kant? Why, I that am a German born, don’t understand him!”’ This was too much to bear, and Holcroft, starting up, called out in no measured tone, ‘Mr. Coleridge, you are the most eloquent man I ever met with, and the most troublesome with your eloquence.’ Phillips* held the cribbage-peg, that was to mark him game, suspended in his hand; and the whist table was silent for a moment. I saw Holcroft downstairs, and on coming to the landing-place in Mitre Court, he stopped me to observe that he thought Mr. Coleridge a very clever man, with a great command of language, but that he feared he did not always affix very precise ideas to the words he used. After he was gone, we had our laugh out, and went on with the argument on the nature of Reason, the Imagination, and the Will. . . . . . It would make a supplement to the ‘Biographia Literaria,’ in a volume and a half, octavo.”

It was at one of these Wednesdays that Lamb started a question as to persons “one would wish to have seen.” It was a suggestive topic, and proved a fruitful one. Mr. Hazlitt, who was there, has left an account behind him of the kind of talk which arose out of this hint so

* Colonel Phillips, mentioned before.

The sketch of one of the Mitre-Courtiers Wednesdays in the last chapter lets as much light into the subject as we can ever hope to get, and brings before us the men who formed that long-dissolved junto with a vividness to have been expected from one who was “both painter and author.” This view of a Wednesday-evening interior is precious from its uniqueness, for Mr. Hazlitt was the only clubman who has cut out himself and his fellows upon paper for our edification.

It is something given towards the history of a man, when we can take his likeness at different points and in various attitudes: all of them the same man, as the sea in a calm and in a hurricane is still the same sea, but with the changes of mood and circumstance.

We have tried to realize him, as he stood shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the Courtiers, not the least man of the gathering, where, however, all (so Elia had commanded) were for the time equal. Now, he has left us a companion-picture of another scene—An Evening at the “Southampton”—where he was accustomed to give audience, and was himself the Great Observed, by right of being Edinburgh Reviewer, London Magazineman, a person of letters who was thought big game enough, both in London and Edinburgh, for Mr. Gifford’s and Mr. Blackwood’s largest shot; and, behind all this, painter and metaphysician.

For several years Mr. Hazlitt was a very regular visitor at the Southampton Coffee-house, which still stands (with the difference of renovation) at the corner of Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane. He always came in the evening, occupied a particular place, reserved for him as scrupulously as his seat at Covent Garden, called for what he wanted, and settled the score whenever it happened to be convenient. His custom was worth something to the establishment, for several of his literary and miscellaneous acquaintance, sure of finding him there, and of hearing “good talk,” made the “Arms” their trysting-spot.

To begin with the most important personage, next, of course, to the Great Observed himself:—

“William, our waiter,” says he, “is dressed neatly in black, takes in the ‘Tickler’ (which many of the gentlemen like to look into), wears, I am told, a diamond pin in his shirt-collar, has a music-master to teach him to play on the flageolet two hours before the maids are up, complains of confinement and a delicate constitution, and is a complete Master Stephen in his way.”

This was the man who was “a sleek hand for his temper in managing an argument,” and who admired George Kirkpatrick. The members of this circle were fond of making bets and laying wagers, “as whether,” instances Mr. H., “Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary was originally published in quarto or folio.” George Kirkpatrick once lost a bet he had entered into, that Congreve’s play of ‘The Mourning Bride’ was Shakspeare’s! He paid in punch.

There were two Kirkpatricks in the Society. “George’s brother Roger was,” says my grandfather, “a rare fellow, of the driest humour and the nicest tact, of infinite sleights and evasions, of a picked phraseology, and the very soul of mimicry.

“I fancy,” continues Mr. Hazlitt, “I have some insight into physiognomy myself, but he could often expound to me, at a single glance, the characters of those of my acquaintance that I had been most at fault about. The account, as it was cast up and balanced between us, was not always very favourable. How finely, how truly, how gaily he took off the company at the Society! Poor and faint are my sketches compared to his!”

Mr. Barry Cornwall, Mr. Mudford, editor of the Courier, whom Mr. Hazlitt had succeeded in 1814 on the Morning Chronicle, and Martin Burney, also frequented the “Arms.”

Dr. Whittle, “a large, plain, fair-faced” man, and a Moravian preacher, was one of them, and Sarratt the chess-player. “Whittle was once sitting,” relates my grandfather, “where Sarratt was playing a game at chess without seeing the board; and after remaining for some time absorbed in silent wonder, he turned suddenly to me, and said, ‘Do you know, Mr. Hazlitt, that I think there is something I could do?’ ‘Well, what is that?’ ‘Why, perhaps you would not guess, but I think I could dance; I’m sure I could; ay, I could dance like Vestris!’

“Sarratt, who was a man of various accomplishments (among others one of the Fancy), afterwards bared his arm, to convince us of his muscular strength, and Mrs. S., going out of the room with another lady, said, ‘Do you know, madam, the Doctor [Whittle] is a great jumper!’ Moliere could not outdo this. Never shall I forget his [Whittle’s] pulling off his coat to eat beefsteaks on equal terms with Martin Burney.

“A country gentleman happened to drop in, and thinking to show off in London company, launched into a lofty panegyric on the ‘Bard’ of Gray, as the sublimest composition in the English language. This assertion presently appeared to be an anachronism, though it was probably the opinion in vogue thirty years ago, when the gentleman was last in town. After a little floundering, one of the party volunteered to express a more contemporary sentiment, by asking, in a tone of mingled confidence and doubt—‘But you don’t think, sir, that Gray is to be mentioned as a poet in the same day as my Lord Byron?’ The disputants were now at issue; all that resulted was, that Gray was set aside as a poet who would not go down among readers of the present day; and his patron treated the works of the noble bard as mere ephemeral effusions, and spoke of poets that would be admired thirty years hence, which was the farthest stretch of his critical imagination. His antagonist’s did not even reach so far.”

There was Mr. George Mouncey, too, of the firm of Mouncey and Gray, solicitors, Staple Inn, a gentleman who displayed his fondness for conviviality at an early stage in the proceedings, by sinking into a hopelessly nebulous frame of mind.

“Yet Hazlitt,” says Patmore, “had a great respect and even personal regard for Mouncey, and always seemed to take pleasure in addressing and listening to him, which, however, he did invariably from the opposite side of the room, and in nine cases out of ten without the possibility of making out one-half of what M. said.” The following declaration is Mr. Patmore’s, and, from its charming simplicity, must be acceptable:—“For my own part, often as I have talked and listened to Mouncey with unmingled pleasure, I have no recollection of having clearly understood a single sentence that he ever uttered.”

“How I should make my friend Mouncey stare,” says Mr. Hazlitt himself, “if I were to mention the name of my still better friend, old honest Signor Friscobaldo, the father of Bellafront.” Yet his name was perhaps invented, and the scenes in which he figures, unrivalled, might for the first time have been read aloud to thrilling ears on this very spot!

“‘Don’t you think,’ says Mouncey to me, ‘that Mr. —— is a very sensible, well-informed man?’ ‘Why no,’ I say; ‘he seems to have no ideas of his own, and only to wait to see what others will say, to set himself against it.’ Here was a rap on the knuckles for Mouncey.

“Before I had exchanged half a dozen sentences with Mouncey, I found that he knew several of my old acquaintances (an immediate introduction of itself, for the discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetening and cement of friendship), and had been intimate with most of the wits and men about town for the last twenty years. He knew Tobin, Wordsworth, Porson, Wilson, Paley, Erskine, and many others. . . . . On my saying that I had never seen the Greek Professor but once, at the library of the London Institution, when he was dressed in an old rusty black coat, with cobwebs hanging to the skirt of it, and with a large patch of coarse brown-paper covering the whole length of his nose . . . . talking to one of the proprietors with an air of suavity, approaching to condescension, Mouncey could not help expressing some little uneasiness for the credit of classical literature. ‘I submit, sir, [he said] whether common sense is not the principal thing?’

“I remember Roger Kirkpatrick once describing three different persons together to myself and Martin Burney, namely, the manager of a country theatre, a tragic, and a comic performer, till we were ready to tumble on the floor with laughing at the oddity of their humours, and at Roger’s extraordinary powers of ventriloquism, bodily and mental; and Burney said (such was the vividness of the scene) that when he awoke the next morning, he wondered what three amusing charac-ters he had been in company with the evening before. Oh! it was a rich treat to see him describe Mudford, him of the Courier, the Contemplative Man, who wrote an answer to ‘Cœlebs,’ coming into a room folding up his great-coat, taking out a little pocket volume, laying it down to think, rubbing the calf of his leg with grave self-complacency, and starting out of his reverie when spoken to, with an inimitable rapid exclamation of ‘Eh!’

“We for some time took C—— for a lawyer, from a certain arguteness of voice and slenderness of neck, and from his having a quibble and a laugh at himself always ready. On inquiry, however, he was found to be a patent-medicine seller, and having leisure in his apprenticeship, and a forwardness of parts, he had taken to study ‘Blackstone’ and ‘The Statutes at Large.’

“Wells,* Mouncey, and myself, were all that remained one evening. We had sat together several hours without being tired of one another’s company. The conversation turned on the Beauties of Charles the Second’s Court at Windsor, and from thence to Count Grammont, their gallant and gay historian. . . . Jacob Hall’s prowess was not forgotten, nor the story of Miss Stewart’s garters. I was getting on in my way with that delicate endroit, in which Miss Churchill is first introduced at court, and is besieged (as a matter of course) by the Duke of York. This [passage] I contended was striking, affecting, and grand, the sublime of amorous biography. . . .