. Wit and good fellowship was the motto inscribed over the
door. When a stranger came in, it was not asked, "Has he written
anything?"--we were above that pedantry; but we waited to see what he
could do. If he could take a hand at piquet, he was welcome to sit down.
If a person liked any thing, if he took snuff heartily, it was sufficient.
He would understand, by analogy, the pungency of other things, besides
Irish blackguard or Scotch rappee. A character was good any where, in a
room or on paper. But we abhorred insipidity, affectation, and fine
gentlemen. There was one of our party who never failed to mark "two for
his Nob" at cribbage, and he was thought no mean person. This was Ned
P----, and a better fellow in his way breathes not. There was ----, who
asserted some incredible matter of fact as a likely paradox, and settled
all controversies by an _ipse dixit_, a _fiat_ of his will, hammering out
many a hard theory on the anvil of his brain--the Baron Munchausen of
politics and practical philosophy:--there was Captain ----, who had you at
an advantage by never understanding you:--there was Jem White, the author
of Falstaff's Letters, who the other day left this dull world to go in
search of more kindred spirits, "turning like the latter end of a lover's
lute:"--there was A----, who sometimes dropped in, the Will Honeycomb of
our set--and Mrs. R----, who being of a quiet turn, loved to hear a noisy
debate. An utterly uninformed person might have supposed this a scene of
vulgar confusion and uproar. While the most critical question was pending,
while the most difficult problem in philosophy was solving, P---- cried
out, "That's game," and M. B. muttered a quotation over the last remains
of a veal-pie at a side-table. Once, and once only, the literary interest
overcame the general. For C---- 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 C----, 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, s