-or, I should say, the best society keeps him: to an amazing fund
of the newest on dits and anecdotes of ton, always ready cut and dried,
he joins a smattering of the classics, and chops logic with the learned
that he may carve their more substantial fare gratis; has a memory
tenacious as a chief judge on matter of invitation, and a stomach
capacious as a city alderman in doing honour to the feast; pretends to
be a connoisseur in wines, although he never possessed above one bottle
at a time in his cellaret, I should think, in the whole course of his
life; talks about works of art and virtu as if Sir Joshua Reynolds had
been his nurse--Claude his intimate acquaintance--or Praxiteles his
great great grandfather. The fellow affects a most dignified contempt
for the canaille, because, in truth, they never invite him to dinner--is
on the free list of all the theatres, from having formerly been freely
hiss'd upon their boards--a retired tragedy king on a small pension, with
a republican stomach, who still enacts the starved apothecary at home,
from penury, and liberally crams his voracious paunch, stuffing like
Father Paul, when at the table of others. With these habits, he has just
managed to scrape together some sixty pounds per annum, upon which, by
good management, he contrives to live like an emperor; for instance, he
keeps a regular book of ~215 invitations, numbers his friends according
to the days of the year, and divides and subdivides them in accordance
with their habits and pursuits, so that an unexpected invitation
requires a reference to his journal: if you invite him for Saturday
next, he will turn to his tablets, apologise for a previous engagement,
run his eye eagerly down the column for an occasional absentee, and
then invite himself for some day in the ensuing week, to which your
politeness cannot fail to accede. You will meet him in London, Brighton,
Bath, Cheltenham, and Margate during the fashionable periods; at all
of which places he has his stated number of dinner friends, where his
presence is as regularly looked for as the appearance of the swallow.
Among the play men he is useful as a looker on, to make one at the table
when they are thin of customers, or to drink a young one into a proper
state for plucking: in other society he coins compliments for the fair
lady of the mansion, extols his host's taste and good fellowship at
table, tells a smutty story to amuse the _bon vivants_ in their cups, or
reci