festive board
of the Kit-Cat Club? Love and conviviality, youth and wit, carried the
day, and through the influence of these seductive companions handsome
Arthur failed to achieve greatness as a statesman. But when it came
to waging political warfare against sour Swift, or to assisting Dick
Steele with the "Tatler," or--better still--toasting some fair one at
the Club,[A] this _bon viveur_ was in his finest mood.

[Footnote A: The (Kit-Cat) club originated in the hospitality of Jacob
Tonson, the bookseller, who, once a week, was host at the house in
Shire Lane to a gathering of writers. In an occasional poem on the
Kit-Cat club, attributed to Sir Richard Blackmore, Jacob is read
backwards into Bocaj, and we are told:

"One Night in Seven at this convenient seat
Indulgent Bocaj did the Muses treat;
Their Drink was gen'rous Wine and Kit-Cat's Pyes their Meat.
Hence did th' Assembly's Title first arise,
And Kit-Cat Wits spring first from Kit-Cat's Pyes."

About the year 1700 this gathering of wits produced a club in which
the great Whig chiefs were associated with foremost Whig writers,
Tonson being secretary. It was as much literary as political, and its
"toasting glasses," each inscribed with lines to a reigning beauty,
caused Arbuthnot to derive its value from "its pell mell pack of
toasts."

Of old Cats and young Kits.

Tonson built a room for the Club at Barn Elms to which each member
gave his portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, who was himself a member.
The pictures were on a new-sized canvas adopted to the height of the
walls, whence the name "Kit-Cat" came to be applied generally
to three-quarter length portraits.--HENRY MORLEY'S Notes on the
_Spectator_.]

It is to be supposed that at some time or other the health of Mistress
Oldfield was drunk by the Kit-Cats, whose custom of honouring
womankind in this bibulous way may have given rise to Pope's plaintive
query:

"Say why are beauties prais'd and honoured most,
The wise man's passion, and the vain man's toast?
Why deck'd with all that land and sea afford,
Why Angels call'd, and angel-like adored?"

And if the actress was thus deified or spiritualised, who drained his
glass more fervently than did Arthur Maynwaring? For whatever may have
been the faults of this dashing Whig, he had the courage of his sins,
and took up his abode with Anne in the full light of day, as though
a marriage ceremony were a bagatelle not worth the reco