, when importuned
for a grace, used to inquire, first slyly leering down the table, "Is
there no clergyman here?"--significantly adding, "thank G----." Nor do
I think our old form at school quite pertinent, where we were used to
preface our bald bread and cheese suppers with a preamble, connecting
with that humble blessing a recognition of benefits the most awful
and overwhelming to the imagination which religion has to offer. _Non
tunc illis erat locus._ I remember we were put to it to reconcile the
phrase "good creatures," upon which the blessing rested, with the
fare set before us, wilfully understanding that expression in a low
and animal sense,--till some one recalled a legend, which told how
in the golden days of Christ's, the young Hospitallers were wont to
have smoking joints of roast meat upon their nightly boards, till
some pious benefactor, commiserating the decencies, rather than the
palates, of the children, commuted our flesh for garments, and gave
us--_horresco referens_--trowsers instead of mutton.

MY FIRST PLAY

At the north end of Cross-court there yet stands a portal, of some
architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving at
present for an entrance to a printing-office. This old door-way, if
you are young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit entrance
to old Drury--Garrick's Drury--all of it that is left. I never pass it
without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring
to the evening when I passed through it to see _my first play_. The
afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder
folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease. With what a beating
heart did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of
which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation! I seem to
remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it.

We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us. He kept the
oil shop (now Davies's) at the corner of Featherstone-building,
in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had
pretensions above his rank. He associated in those days with John
Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy; if
John (which is quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of
his manner from my godfather. He was also known to, and visited by,
Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought
his first wife on her elopement with him from a