his adversary; and so could maintain almost any opinion,
however absurd or fantastical, with fearless impunity. I have heard a
sensible and well-informed man say, that he never was in company with
Mr. Tooke without being delighted and surprised, or without feeling the
conversation of every other person to be flat in the comparison; but
that he did not recollect having ever heard him make a remark that
struck him as a sound and true one, or that he himself appeared to think
so. He used to plague Fuseli by asking him after the origin of the
Teutonic dialects, and Dr. Parr, by wishing to know the meaning of the
common copulative, _Is_. Once at G----'s, he defended Pitt from a charge
of verbiage, and endeavoured to prove him superior to Fox. Some one
imitated Pitt's manner, to show that it was monotonous, and he imitated
him also, to show that it was not. He maintained (what would he not
maintain?) that young Betty's acting was finer than John Kemble's, and
recited a passage from Douglas in the manner of each, to justify the
preference he gave to the former. The mentioning this will please the
living; it cannot hurt the dead. He argued on the same occasion and in
the same breath, that Addison's style was without modulation, and
that it was physically impossible for any one to write well, who was
habitually silent in company. He sat like a king at his own table, and
gave law to his guests--and to the world! No man knew better how to
manage his immediate circle, to foil or bring them out. A professed
orator, beginning to address some observations to Mr. Tooke with a
voluminous apology for his youth and inexperience, he said, "Speak up,
young man!"--and by taking him at his word, cut short the flower of
orations. Porson was the only person of whom he stood in some degree of
awe, on account of his prodigious memory and knowledge of his favourite
subject, Languages. Sheridan, it has been remarked, said more good
things, but had not an equal flow of pleasantry. As an instance of
Mr. Horne Tooke's extreme coolness and command of nerve, it has been
mentioned that once at a public dinner when he had got on the table to
return thanks for his health being drank with a glass of wine in his
hand, and when there was a great clamour and opposition for some time,
after it had subsided, he pointed to the glass to shew that it was still
full. Mr. Holcroft (the author of the _Road to Ruin_) was one of the
most violent and fiery-spirited of all