wander past the place and think that Hazlitt, his | elevation. 'I will explain,' was his condescending hand still warm with the grip of Lamb's, has entered it often. In an essay on 'Coffee-House Politicians,' in the second volume of his 'Table Talk,' Hazlitt has sketched the coterie at the 'Southampton,' in a manner not unworthy of Steele. The picture wants Sir Richard's mellow, Jan Steen colour, but it possesses much of Wilkie's dainty touch and keen appreciation of character. Let us call up, he says, the old customers at the 'Southampton' from the dead, and take a glass with them. First of all comes Mr. George Kirkpatrick, who was

phrase. If you corrected the intolerable magnifico, he corrected your correction; if you hinted at an obvious blunder, he was always aware what your mistaken objection would be. He and his clique would spend a whole evening on a wager as to whether the first edition of Dr. Johnson's 'Dictionary' was quarto or folio. The confident assertions, the cautious ventures, the length of time demanded to ascertain the fact, the precise terms of the forfeit, the provisoes for getting out of paying it at last, led to a long and inextricable

discussion. Kirkpatrick's vanity, however, one chosen impersonations. Roger represented the night led him into a terrible pitfall. He recklessly honest, vain, empty man purchasing an ounce of ventured money on the fact that The Mourning tea by stratagem to astonish a favoured guest; he Bride was written by Shakespeare; headlong he portrayed him on the summit of a narrow, winding, fell, and ruefully he partook of the bowl of punch and very steep staircase, contemplating in airy for which he had to pay. As a rule his nightly security the imaginary approach of duns. This outlay seldom exceeded sevenpence. Four hours' worthy doctor on one occasion, when watching good conversation for sevenpence made the 'South- Sarratt, the great chess-player, turned suddenly to ampton' the cheapest of London clubs. Hazlitt, and said, 'I think I could dance. I'm sure I could; aye, I could dance like Vestris.' Such were the odd people Roger caricatured on the memorable night he pulled off his coat to eat beef-steaks on equal terms with Martin Burney. "Then there was C., who, from his slender neck,

"Kirkpatrick's brother Roger was the Mercutio to his Shallow. Roger was 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.' He had the mind of a harlequin; his wit was acrobatic, and threw somer-shrillness of voice, and his ever-ready quibble and saults. He took in a character at a glance, and laugh at himself, was for some time taken for a threw a pun at you as dexterously as a fly-fisher lawyer, with which folk the Buildings were then, casts his fly over a trout's nose. 'How finely,' as now, much infested. But on careful inquiry says Hazlitt, in his best and heartiest mood; 'how finely, how truly, how gaily he took off the company at the "Southampton!" Poor and faint are my sketches compared to his! It was like looking into a camera-obscura-you saw faces shining and speaking. The smoke curled, the lights dazzled, the oak wainscoting took a higher polish. There was old S., tall and gaunt, with his couplet from Pope and case at Nisi Prius; Mudford, eyeing the ventilator and lying perdu for a moral; and H. and A. taking another friendly finishing glass. These and many more windfalls of character he gave us in thought, word, and action. I remember his once describing three different persons together to myself and Martin Burney [a bibulous nephew of Madame d'Arblay's and a great friend of Charles Lamb's], 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 characters he had been in company with the evening before.' He was fond also of imitating old Mudford, of the Courier, a fat, pert, dull man, who had left the Morning Chronicle in 1814, just as Hazlitt joined it, and was renowned for having written a reply to 'Cœlebs.' He would enter a room, fold up his great-coat, take out a little pocket volume, lay it down to think, rubbing all the time the fleshy calf of his leg with dull gravity and intense and stolid self-complacency, and start out of his reveries when addressed with the same inimitable vapid exclamation of Eh!' Dr. Whittle, a large, plain-faced Moravian preacher, who had turned physician, was another of his

he turned out to be a patent-medicine seller, who
at leisure moments had studied Blackstone and
the statutes at large from mere sympathy with the
neighbourhood. E. came next, a rich tradesman,
Tory in grain, and an everlasting babbler on the
strong side of politics; querulous, dictatorial, and
with a peevish whine in his voice like a beaten
schoolboy. He was a stout advocate for the Bour-
bons and the National Debt, and was duly disliked
by Hazlitt, we may feel assured. The Bourbons
he affirmed to be the choice of the French people,
the Debt necessary to the salvation of these king-
doms. To a little inoffensive man, 'of a saturnine
aspect but simple conceptions,' Hazlitt once heard
him say grandly, 'I will tell you, sir. I will make
my proposition so clear that you will be convinced
of the truth of my observation in a moment.
sider, sir, the number of trades that would be
thrown out of employ if the Debt were done away
with. What would become of the porcelain manu-
facture without it?' He would then show the
company a flower, the production of his own
garden, calling it a unique and curious exotic, and
hold forth on his carnations, his country-house, and
his old English hospitality, though he never invited
a friend to come down to a Sunday's dinner.
Mean and ostentatious, insolent and servile, he
did not know whether to treat those he conversed
with as if they were his porters or his customers.
The 'prentice boy was not yet ground out of him,
and his imagination hovered between his grand
new country mansion and the workhouse. Opposed
to him and every one else was K., a Radical re
former and tedious logician, who wanted to make
short work of the taxes and National Debt, recon-
struct the Government from first principles, and
shatter the Holy Alliance at a blow. He was for

too late, and was inexorable to entreaty. Mouncey sat with his hat on and a hectic flush in his face while any hope remained, but as soon as we rose to go, he dashed out of the room as quick as lightning, determined not to be the last. I said some time after to the waiter that "Mr. Mouncey was no flincher." "Oh, sir !" says he, "you should have known him formerly. Now he is quite another man: he seldom stays later than one or two; then he used to help sing catches, and all sorts."

"It was at the 'Southampton' that George Cruikshank, Hazlitt, and Hone used to often meet, to discuss subjects for Hone's squibs on the Queen's trial (1820). Cruikshank would sometimes dip his finger in ale and sketch a suggestion on the table.

crushing out the future prospects of society as with a machine, and for starting where the French Revolution had begun five-and-twenty years before. He was a born disturber, and never agreed to more than half a proposition at a time. Being very stingy, he generally brought a bunch of radishes with him for economy, and would give a penny to a band of musicians at the door, observing that he liked their performance better than all the opera-squalling. His objections to the National Debt arose from motives of personal economy; and he objected to Mr. Canning's pension because it took a farthing a year out of his own pocket. "Another great sachem at the Southampton' was Mr. George Mouncey, of the firm of Mouncey & Gray, solicitors, Staple's Inn. 'He was,' says "While living in that state of half-assumed Hazlitt, 'the oldest frequenter of the place and love frenzy at No. 9, Southampton Buildings, Hazthe latest sitter-up; well-informed, unobtrusive, and litt produced some of his best work. His noble that sturdy old English character, a lover of truth lectures on the age of Elizabeth had just been and justice. Mouncey never approved of anything delivered, and he was writing for the Edinburgh unfair or illiberal, and, though good-natured and Review, the New Monthly, and the London Maga gentleman-like, never let an absurd or unjust pro-zine, in conjunction with Charles Lamb, Reynolds, position pass him without expressing dissent.' He Barry Cornwall, De Quincey, and Wainwright was much liked by Hazlitt, for they had mutual ('Janus Weathercock') the poisoner. In 1821 he friends, and Mourcey had been intimate with most published his volume of Dramatic Criticisms,' of the wits and men about town for twenty years and his subtle Table Talk;' in 1823, his foolish before. 'He had in his time known Tobin, 'Liber Amoris;' and in 1824, his fine 'Sketches of Wordsworth, Porson, Wilson, Paley, and Erskine. the Principal English Picture Galleries.' He would speak of Paley's pleasantry and unassuming manners, and describe Porson's deep potations and long quotations at the "Cider Cellars."' Warming with his theme, Hazlitt goes on in his essay to etch one memorable evening at the 'Southampton.' A few only were left, 'like stars at break of day,' the discourse and the ale were growing sweeter; but Mouncey, Hazlitt, and a man named Wells, alone remained. The conversation turned on the frail beauties of Charles II.'s Court, and from thence passed to Count Grammont, their gallant, gay, and not over-scrupulous historian. Each one cited his favourite passage in turn; from Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer, they progressed by pleasant stages of talk to pale Miss Churchill and her fortunate fall from her horse. Wells then spoke of 'Apuleius and his Golden Ass,' 'Cupid and Psyche,' and the romance of 'Heliodorus, Theogenes, and Chariclea,' which, as he affirmed, opened with a pastoral landscape equal to one of Claude's. 'The night waned,' says the delightful essayist, but our glasses brightened, enriched with the pearls of Grecian story. Our cup-bearer slept in a corner of the room, like another Endymion, in the pale rays of a halfextinguished lamp, and, starting up at a fresh summons for a further supply, he swore it was

"Hazlitt, who was born in 1778 and died in 1830, was the son of a Unitarian minister of Irish descent. "Cider descent. Hazlitt was at first intended for an artist, but, coming to London, soon drifted into literature. He became a parliamentary reporter to the Morning Chronicle in 1813, and in that wearing occupation injured his naturally weak digestion. In 1814 he succeeded Mudford as theatrical critic on Perry's paper. In 1815 he joined the Champion, and in 1818 wrote for the Yellow Dwarf. Hazlitt's habits at No. 9 were enough to have killed a rhinoceros. He sat up half the night, and rose about one or two. He then remained drinking the strongest black tea, nibbling a roll, and reading (no appetite, of course) till about five p.m. At supper at the 'Southampton,' his jaded stomach then rousing, he ate a heavy meal of steak or game, frequently drinking during his long and suicidal vigils three or four quarts of water. Wine and spirits he latterly never touched. Morbidly self-conscious, touchy, morose, he believed that his aspect and manner were strange and disagreeable to his friends, and that every one was perpetually insulting him. He had a magnificent forehead, regular features, pale as marble, and a profusion of curly black hair, but his eyes were shy and suspicious. His manner when not at his ease Mr. P. G. Patmore describes

as worthy of Apemantus himself. He would enter ever had was in persuading him, after some years' a room as if he had been brought in in custody. difficulty, that Fielding was better than Smollett. He shuffled sidelong to the nearest chair, sat down On one occasion he was for making out a list of on the extreme corner of it, dropped his hat on persons famous in history that one would wish to the floor, buried his chin in his stock, vented his see again, at the head of whom were Pontius Pilate, usual pet phrase on such occasions, 'It's a fine Sir Thomas Browne, and Dr. Faustus; but we day,' and resigned himself moodily to social misery. black-balled most of his list. But with what a If the talk did not suit him, he bore it a certain gusto he would describe his favourite authors, time, silent, self-absorbed, as a man condemned to Donne or Sir Philip Sidney, and call their most death, then suddenly, with a brusque 'Well, good crabbed passages delicious. He tried them on his morning,' shuffled to the door and blundered his palate, as epicures taste olives, and his observaway out, audibly cursing himself for his folly in tions had a smack in them like a roughness on the voluntarily making himself the laughing-stock of an tongue. With what discrimination he hinted a idiot's critical servants. It must have been hard to defect in what he admired most, as in saying the bear with such a man, whatever might be his talent; display of the sumptuous banquet in Paradise and yet his dying words were, 'I've led a happy life.'" Regained' was not in true keeping, as the simplest That delightful humorist, Lamb, lived in South- fare was all that was necessary to tempt the exampton Buildings, in 1800, coming from Penton- tremity of hunger, and stating that Adam and Eve, ville, and moving to Mitre Court Buildings, Fleet in 'Paradise Lost,' were too much like married Street. Here, then, must have taken place some of people. He has furnished many a text for Colethose enjoyable evenings which have been so ridge to preach upon. There was no fuss or cant pleasantly sketched by Hazlitt, one of the most about him; nor were his sweets or sours ever favoured of Lamb's guests :diluted with one particle of affectation."

"At Lamb's we used to have lively skirmishes, at the Thursday evening parties. I doubt whether the small-coal man's musical parties could exceed them. Oh, for the pen of John Buncle to consecrate a petit souvenir to their memory! There was Lamb himself, the most delightful, the most provoking, the most witty, and the most sensible of men. He always made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening. His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is the best. No one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things, in half-a-dozen sentences, as he does. His jests scald like tears, and he probes a question with a play upon words. What a keenlaughing, hair-brained vein of home-felt truth! What choice venom! How often did we cut into the haunch of letters! how we skimmed the cream of criticism! How we picked out the marrow of authors! Need I go over the names? They were but the old, everlasting set-Milton and Shakespeare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addison, Swift and Gay, Fielding, Smollet, Sterne, Richardson, Hogarth's prints, Claude's landscapes, the Cartoons at Hampton Court, and all those things that, having once been, must ever be. The Scotch novels had not then been heard of, so we said nothing about them. In general we were hard upon the moderns. The author of the Rambler was only tolerated in Boswell's life of him; and it was as much as anyone could do to edge in a word for Junius. Lamb could not bear 'Gil Blas;' this was a fault. I remember the greatest triumph I

Towards the unhappy close of Sheridan's life, when weighed down by illness and debt (he had just lost the election at Stafford, and felt clouds and darkness gathering closer round him), he was thrown for several days (about 1814) into a sponginghouse in Tooke's Court, Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane. Tom Moore describes meeting him shortly before with Lord Byron, at the table of Rogers, and some days after Sheridan burst into tears on hearing that Byron had said that he (Sheridan) had written the best comedy, the best operetta, the best farce, the best address, and delivered the best oration ever produced in England. Sheridan's books and pictures had been sold; and from his sordid prison he wrote a fiteous letter to his kind but severely business-like friend, Whitbread, the brewer.

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I have done everything," he says, "to obtain my release, but in vain; and, Whitbread, putting all false professions of friendship and feeling out of the question, you have no right to keep me here, for it is in truth your act; if you had not forcibly withheld from me the £12,000, in consequence of a letter from a miserable swindler, whose claim you in particular know to be a lie, I should at least have been out of the reach of this miserable insult; for that, and that only, lost me my seat in Parliament.”

Even in the depths of this den, however, Sheridan still remained sanguine; and when Whitbread came to release him, he found him confidently calculating on the representation of Westminster, then about to become vacant by the unjust disgrace of Lord Cochrane. On his return home to his wife,