iver, not very long
since, in an old Town and Country Magazine, at the Pantheon masquerade
"in an old English habit." Straightway my imagination ran out to meet
him, to look at him, to follow him about. I forgot the names of scores
of fine gentlemen of the past age, who were mentioned besides. We want
to see this man who has amused and charmed us; who has been our friend,
and given us hours of pleasant companionship and kindly thought. I
protest when I came, in the midst of those names of people of fashion,
and beaux, and demireps, upon those names "Sir J. R-yn-lds, in a domino;
Mr. Cr-d-ck and Dr. G-ldsm-th, in two old English dresses," I had, so
to speak, my heart in my mouth. What, YOU here, my dear Sir Joshua? Ah,
what an honor and privilege it is to see you! This is Mr. Goldsmith? And
very much, sir, the ruff and the slashed doublet become you! O Doctor!
what a pleasure I had and have in reading the Animated Nature. How DID
you learn the secret of writing the decasyllable line, and whence that
sweet wailing note of tenderness that accompanies your song? Was Beau
Tibbs a real man, and will you do me the honor of allowing me to sit at
your table at supper? Don't you think you know how he would have talked?
Would you not have liked to hear him prattle over the champagne?

Now, Hood is passed away--passed off the earth as much as Goldsmith or
Horace. The times in which he lived, and in which very many of us lived
and were young, are changing or changed. I saw Hood once as a young man,
at a dinner which seems almost as ghostly now as that masquerade at the
Pantheon (1772), of which we were speaking anon. It was at a dinner of
the Literary Fund, in that vast apartment which is hung round with the
portraits of very large Royal Freemasons, now unsubstantial ghosts.
There at the end of the room was Hood. Some publishers, I think, were
our companions. I quite remember his pale face; he was thin and deaf,
and very silent; he scarcely opened his lips during the dinner, and he
made one pun. Some gentleman missed his snuff-box, and Hood said,--(the
Freemasons' Tavern was kept, you must remember, by Mr. CUFF in those
days, not by its present proprietors). Well, the box being lost, and
asked for, and CUFF (remember that name) being the name of the landlord,
Hood opened his silent jaws and said * * * Shall I tell you what he
said? It was not a very good pun, which the great punster then made.
Choose your favorite pun out of "Whims a