This habit of harrangue grew so much upon Sheridan in his declining days, that he would, in answering the observation of any person in company, call him "the honourable gentleman."

The late Joseph Richardson, Sheridan's "fidus Achates," was (with all his good-nature, and temper,) a huge lover of this particular kind of disputation. Tell Richardson where you dined yesterday, and he would immediately enquire,— "Had you a good day? was there much argument ?"

My father often met Lord (then Mr.) Erskine in the street, and invited him to dinner on that same day ;-on these occasions, our party which, when I was at home, form'd a trio, might as well have been call'd a duet, for I was only a listener; -indeed, my father was little more, for Erskine was then young at the bar, flush'd with success, and enthusiastick in his profession. He would, therefore, repeat his pleadings in each particular case ;-this I thought dull enough, and congratulated myself, till I knew better, when the oration was over. But here I reckon'd without my host, for when my father observed that the arguments were unanswerable,-" By no means, my

dear sir," would Erskine say,

"had I been coun

sel for instead of B, you shall hear what I would have advanced on the other side;"-then we did hear, and I wish'd him at the forum!

No two companions could have been worse coupled than Lord Erskine and my father; for the Lawyer delighted in talking of himself and the bar, and the Manager of himself and the theatre. Erskine was a gifted man, and, what is better, a good man;-in the early part of his career, he was consider'd a great man,-but, as John Moody says of Sir Francis Wronghead, "he could no' hawld it."

In addition to the set already mention'd, we had a heterogeneous body of visiters, consisting of noble, gentle, and simple; and in the year 1777, when my father commenced his lease of Foote's Patent in the Haymarket Theatre, we experienced a fresh influx of sundry dramatists, and performers new to London; some of whom he occasionally ask'd to dine with him.

Of our excursions from home,-but all this will be better reserved for part of the next Chapter;-besides I am going out to keep a dinner engagement, hich will make, from the earliest

incidents I have just recorded-stay,-this is a matter of figures. I was in my fourth year when Garrick visited me at Richmond; counting, then, from my fourth birth-day to my last in 1†26*, 8 leap-years included, I should have eaten, within that space of my life, (if sickness had not often made a hole in the arithmetick,) twenty-one thousand, nine hundred and sixteen dinners. Well,— 'tis folly to wish ourselves younger; for, of all the ancient gentlemen who will have their own way, "Old Time the clock-setter, that bald sexton Time," is the most obstinate.

* This was written in 1827.

CHAPTER FIFTH.

Gaudia, discursus.

JUVENAL.

WHILE a Westminster-boy, one of my earliest migrations, through a turnpike-gate at any considerable distance from the metropolis, was to Bath; whither I went with my father, (I forget in what year,) to pass the Christmas holidays.

Bath, at Christmas, then attracted crowds of fashionables to those waters wherein the leprous King Bladud, taking a hint from the measly hogs, once perform'd his successful ablutions. When so unsophisticated a King (who flourish'd eight hundred years before the christian era) condescended to be cured with the pork, this pignus amoris of a Sovereign to the "Swinish multitude," must have been particularly delicate, and delightful;—and, although there could not have been any medical practitioner resident in the town,— the town not being then built,—both the monarch and the herd were soon as sound as if they

had call'd in a regular Bath physician, and had given him a guinea a piece.

How gothick would the Balls at the upper rooms of Bath (which were the rage at the time of which I am writing) appear, even to the eldest dowager at Almack's, who is now striving to dance her daughters into matrimony !—yet, as long as I can remember a newspaper, all dancers are, invariably, the gay "Votaries of Terpsichore," and they all trip it on the light fantastick toe," in the daily press, from the reign of Beau Nash, to the present moment. The hackney writers have hackney'd these phrases, till it is high time to vary them.-There was little tripping on the toe when I first went to Bath; the Ball open'd with a long series of formal minuets, and then concluded, precisely at eleven o'clock, with the unfantastick jigging of the vulgar country-dance ;-in the course of which last, many a shock was sustain'd, by one young gentleman running against another, while the Misses were pushing their partners into their proper places.-The graceful Quadrille, and the voluptuous Waltz, have long superseded these stately stalkings, and jog-trot jumpings;-Cotillons led the way to this revolution, as we learn