e
first place as a Quaker, and in the second place as a banker's clerk?

Bernard Barton, as I recollect him, was somewhat of a dear old man--short
in person, red in face, with dark brown hair. He was, as I have said, a
clerk in a bank, but his poetry had elevated him, somehow, to the rank of
a provincial lion, and at certain houses, where the dinner was good and
the wine was ditto, he ever was a welcome guest. I dined with him at the
house of a friend in Woodbridge, and it seemed to me that he cared more
for good feeding and a glass of wine and a pinch of snuff than the sacred
Nine. Of course at that time I had not been educated up to the fitting
state of mind with which the philosopher of our day proceeds to the
performance of the mysteries of dinner. Dining had at that time not been
elevated to the rank of a science, to the study of which the most acute
intellects devote their highest energies; nor had flowers then been
invoked to lend an additional grace to the dining-table. Besides,
dinners such as Mr. Black gives at Brighton, scientific dinners, such as
those feasts with which Sir Henry Thompson regales his friends, were
unknown. Nevertheless, now and then we managed to dine comfortably off
roast beef or lamb, a slice of boiled or roast fowl, a bit of
plum-pudding or fruit tart, a crust of bread and cheese, with--tell it
not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askalon--sherry and Madeira
at dinner, and a few glasses of fine old fruity port after. Some
Shakespearian quotations--unknown to me then, for Shakespeare was little
quoted in purely evangelical circles, either in Church or Dissent--a
reference to Sir Walter Scott's earlier German translations, formed about
the sum and substance of the conversation which took place between the
poet and my host; all the rest was principally social gossip and an
exchange of pleasantries between the poet and his friend, whom he
addressed familiarly as 'mine ancient.' It was a great treat to me, of
course, to dine with Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet. Once upon a time a
Quaker minister had come to Woodbridge on a preaching tour, and all the
Quakers, male and female, small and great, rich and poor, were ranged
before him. When Bernard Barton was announced, the good old man said,
'Barton--Barton--that's a name I don't recollect.' The bearer of the
name replied it would be strange if he did, seeing that they had never
met before. Suddenly looking up, the minister ex