his verses to the good old mother and a circle of her daughters.

There are some few, who have been led into low company, merely from an affectation of humour; and, from a desire of seeing the droller scenes of life, have descended to associate with the meanest of the mob, and picked their cronies from lanes and alleys. The most striking instance I know of this low passion for drollery is Toby Bumper, a young fellow of family and fortune, and not without talents, who has taken more than ordinary pains to degrade himself; and is now become almost as low a character as any of those whom he has chosen for his companions. Toby will drink purl in a morning, smoke his pipe in a night-cellar, dive for a dinner, or eat black-puddings at Bartholomew Fair, for the humour of the thing. He has also studied, and practises all the plebeian arts and exercises under the best masters; and has disgraced himself with every impolite accomplishment. He has had many a

set-to with Buck-horse; and has now and then had the honour of receiving a fall from the great Broughton himself. Nobody is better known among the hackney-coachman as a brother whip; at the noble game of prison-bars, he is a match even for the natives of Essex or Cheshire; and he is frequently engaged in the Artillery-ground with Faulkner and Dingate at cricket, and is himself esteemed as good at Bat as either of the Bennets. Another of Toby's favourite amusements is, to attend the executions at Tyburn; and it once happened, that one of his familiar intimates was unfortunately brought thither; when Toby carried his regard to his deceased friend so far, as to get himself knocked down in endeavouring to rescue the body from the surgeons.

As Toby affects to mimic, in every particular, the air and manners of the vulgar, he never fails to enrich his conversation with their emphatic oaths and

expressive dialect, which recommend him as a man of excellent humour and high fun among the Choice Spirits at Comus's Court, or at the meetings of the 'Sons of Sound Sense and Satisfaction.' He is also particularly famous for singing those cant songs, drawn up in the barbarous dialect of sharpers and pick-pockets; the humour of which he often heightens, by screwing up his mouth and rolling about a large quid of tobacco between his jaws. These and other like accomplishments frequently promote him to the chair in these facetious Societies.

Toby has indulged the same notions of humour even in his amours; and is well known to every street-walker between Charing-Cross and Cheapside. This has given several shocks to his constitution, and often involved him in unlucky scrapes. He has been frequently bruised, beaten, and kicked' by the bullies of Wapping and Fleet-ditch; and was once soundly drubbed by a soldier for engaging with his trull in St. James's Park. The last time I saw him, he was laid up with two black eyes and a broken pate, which he got in a midnight skirmish, about a mistress in a night-cellar.

IF we look into the several inns of court, the professed students of the law compose a very numerous body but if we afterwards turn our eyes on those few who are employed in exercising their ta lents in Westminster-Hall, this prodigious army of lawyers shrink to a very thin and inconsiderable corps. Thousands, it seems, are disgusted with the unpleasing dryness of the study, as it is now managed, and conceive an unconquerable aversion to the white leaves and the old black letter. This early dislike to legal inquiries certainly proceeds from the fatal mistakes in the plan of study hitherto recommended. According to all systems now extant, it is absolutely impossible to be at once a lawyer and a fine gentleman. Seeing with concern the many evils arising from these erroneous principles, I have at length devised a method to remedy all these inconveniences; a method now very successfully practised by several young gentlemen. Wherefore I must beg leave to submit my thoughts to the public by the means of your paper, and to chalk out the out-lines of a treatise, now ready for the press, intitled, The Complete Barrister; or, A New Institute of the Laws of England.

My Lord Coke prescribes to our student to follow the advice given in the ancient verses, prefixed to this letter, for the good spending of the day: 'Six

See the translation in the body of the paper.

hours to sleep, six to study of the law, four to 'prayers, two to meals, and the rest to the Muses.' But what an absurd and unfashionable distribution of the four-and-twenty hours! I will venture a thousand pounds to a shilling, that not one student in the kingdom divides his time in this manner. Here is not a single word of Vauxhall, Ranelagh, the theatres, or other public diversions; not to mention that nobody but a Methodist would ever think of praying four hours, and that it would be impossible though we were content with snapping up a chop every day at Betty's, to dispatch even dinner in two. How then shall we reconcile these precepts, scarce practicable by an hermit, to the life of a young gentlemen who keeps the best company; or how can these rules for severe application be made consistent with the practice of those who divide their whole time between eating, drinking, sleeping, and amusements? Well knowing that the volatile dispositions of the young gentlemen of the present age can never submit the ordering of their lives to any prescribed rules, I have endeavoured to square my precepts to their lives; and have so contrived the matter, that amidst the keenest pursuit of their pleasures, they shall be engaged in the most improving course of the law.

As laws are chiefly nothing else but rules of action, what can be more cruel and absurd than to coop up a brisk young man, to learn in his chambers what he can so much better teach himself by going abroad into the world? I propose to dose gentlemen with study, as Dr. Rock does with physic, to be taken at home or abroad, without loss of time or hindrance of business. This, I am convinced, is not only the best method, but also the only scheme which several inhabitants of the inns of courts would ever follow. I shall not at present forestall the contents of my treatise, by presenting you with a dry abstract of it,

VOL. IV.

but rather endeavour to give you an idea of the spirit and manner in which it is written, by delineating the plan diligently pursued by one of my favourite pupils; and I cannot but congratulate the bar, that so many young men, instead of blinding their eyes and bewildering their understandings with Coke, Plowden, Salkeld, &c. have sense enough to follow the same course of study.

Tom Riot, the principal ornament of my class of students, was sent to the Temple, not with any intention that he should become a great lawyer, but merely because, for a few years, his father did not know how to dispose of him otherwise: but so unwearied has been his application to the new method, that his father and the rest of his friends will, I doubt not, be surprised at his wonderful proficiency. As nothing is of more consequence to those gentlemen who intend to harangue at the bar, than the acquiring a ready elocution and an easy habit of delivering their thoughts in public, to this I pay particular attention. For this purpose I advised him to a diligent attendance on the theatres; and I assure you, Mr. Town, he never fails to take notes at a new play, and seldom or never misses appearing at one house or the other in the green-boxes. He has also gathered many beautiful flowers of rhetoric, unblown upon by all other orators ancient or modern, from the Robin Hood Society; and at the same place he has collected the strongest arguments on every subject, and habituated himself to modes of reasoning never hitherto introduced into courts of justice. But what has been of more than ordinary service to him, and is particularly recommended by Lord Coke himself, who calls conference the life of study,' is his so frequent attendance at George's, and the other coffeehouses about the Temple, where every student has so many opportunities of benefiting himself by daily