the darkness of oblivion. A clever dabbler in literature, an
honest politician--a politician with scruples was as rare in those
days as he is now--and a man of honour who could drink as much as his
friends, the volatile Arthur was, perhaps, best known as the most
attractive talker of the famous Kit-Cat Club. The Kit-Cat Club! What
a wealth of anecdote doth its name conjure up to the student of the
past! 'Twas in this famous organisation that noblemen and wits met on
common ground, drank many a toast to the House of Hanover or to some
reigning belle of London town, and exercised a patronising censorship
over the world of letters. They were "the patriots that saved Briton,"
says Horace Walpole, in referring to their anti-Jacobitism, and yet
the most of them are forgotten.

If tradition is to be believed (and what siren is more comfortable to
hearken unto than tradition?) these self-same patriots took their name
of "Kit-Cats" from prosaic mutton pies. 'Twould be horrible to think
on this gastronomic derivation of the title were we not to remember,
quite fortunately, that geese saved classic Rome. Why, therefore,
should not the preservers of perfidious Albion suggest the aroma of a
lamb pasty?

It seems that the Club had its first headquarters in Shire Lane, near
Temple Bar, at the establishment of Christopher Cat, a pastrycook
who helped to enliven the inner man by delicious meat pies dubbed
"Kit-Cats." Hence the name of that notable coterie of Whigs which
included Addison and Dick Steele, Congreve and His Grace of
Devonshire.[A]

[Footnote A: Our modern celebrated clubs are founded upon eating and
drinking, which are points wherein most men agree, and in which the
learned and illiterate, the dull and the airy, the philosopher and the
buffoon, can all of them bear a part. The Kit-Cat itself is said to
have taken its original from a mutton pie. The Beef-Steak and October
clubs are neither of them averse to eating and drinking, if we may
form a judgment of them from their respective titles.--ADDISON in the
_Spectator_.]

Maynwaring came of good English stock, and in early life showed the
results of his relationship to the aristocratic house of Cholmondeley
by supporting the lost cause of James II. So fervent an admirer was he
of that apology for royalty that he took up the pen, if not the sword,
in his behalf, and steeped the mightier weapon with satirical ink when
he wrote a pamphlet entitled "The King of Hearts." Rum