at
pleasure--and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets,
in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say was the sole
remuneration which he had received for many years' nightly
illumination of the orchestra and various avenues of that theatre--and
he was content it should be so. The honour of Sheridan's
familiarity--or supposed familiarity--was better to my godfather than
money.

[Footnote 23: Field.]

F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen: grandiloquent, yet courteous.
His delivery of the commonest matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had
two Latin words almost constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin
from an oilman's lips!), which my better knowledge since has enabled
me to correct. In strict pronunciation they should have been sounded
_vice versa_--but in those young years they impressed me with more awe
than they would now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro--in his own
peculiar pronunciation monosyllabically elaborated, or Anglicised,
into something like _verse verse_. By an imposing manner, and the help
of these distorted syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to the
highest parochial honours which St. Andrew's has to bestow.

He is dead--and thus much I thought due to his memory, both for my
first orders (little wondrous talismans!--slight keys, and
insignificant to outward sight, but opening to me more than Arabian
paradises!) and moreover, that by his testamentary beneficence I came
into possession of the only landed property which I could ever call my
own--situate near the road-way village of pleasant Puckeridge, in
Hertfordshire. When I journeyed down to take possession, and planted
foot on my own ground, the stately habits of the donor descended upon
me, and I strode (shall I confess the vanity?) with larger paces over
my allotment of three-quarters of an acre, with its commodious mansion
in the midst, with the feeling of an English freeholder that all
betwixt sky and centre was my own. The estate has passed into more
prudent hands, and nothing but an agrarian can restore it.

In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfortable manager who
abolished them!--with one of these we went. I remember the waiting at
the door--not that which is left--but between that and an inner door
in shelter--O when shall I be such an expectant again!--with the cry
of nonpareils, an indispensable play-house accompaniment in those
days. As near as I can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation