while labouring under the delusion that he could
not well be a genius without being unsober and wild, one specimen may
suffice. He was employed by Lord Melbourne to paint a ceiling at his
seat of Brocket Hall, Herts; and taking advantage of permission to angle
in the fish-pond, he rose from a carousal at midnight, and seeking a
net, and calling on an assistant painter for help, dragged the preserve,
and left the whole fish gasping on the bank in rows. Nor was this the
worst; when reproved mildly, and with smiles, by Lady Melbourne, he had
the audacity to declare, that her beauty had so bewitched him that he
knew not what he was about. To plunder the fish-pond and be impertinent
to the lady was not the way to obtain patronage. The impudent painter
collected his pencils together, and returned to London to enjoy his
inelegant pleasures and ignoble company."

Horsfield states that "a custom far more honoured by the breach than the
observance heretofore existed in the manor of Eastbourne; in compliance
with which, after any lady, or respectable farmer or tradesman's wife,
was delivered of a child, certain quantities of food and of beer were
placed in a room adjacent to the sacred edifice; when, after the second
lesson was concluded, the whole agricultural portion of the worshippers
marched out of church, and devoured what was prepared for them. This was
called _Sops and Ale_."

[Sidenote: EASTBOURNE RUG]

John Taylor the water Poet, whom we saw, at Goring, the prey of fleas
and the Law, made another journey into the county between August 9th and
September 3rd, 1653, and as was usual with him wrote about it in
doggerel verse. At Eastbourne he found a brew called Eastbourne Rug:--

No cold can ever pierce his flesh or skin
Of him who is well lin'd with Rug within;
Rug is a lord beyond the Rules of Law,
It conquers hunger in a greedy maw,
And, in a word, of all drinks potable,
Rug is most puissant, potent, notable.
Rug was the Capital Commander there,
And his Lieutenant-General was strong beer.

Possibly it was in order to contest the supremacy of Rug (which one may
ask for in Eastbourne to-day in vain) that Newhaven Tipper sprang into
being.

The Martello towers, which Pitt built during the Napoleonic scare at the
beginning of last century, begin at Eastbourne, where the cliffs cease,
and continue along the coast into Kent. They were erected probably quite
as much to assist