repeated occasionally with much
festivity and good fellowship. Dr. Bernard, Dean of Derry; a very
amiable and old friend of mine, Dr. Douglas, since Bishop of
Salisbury; Johnson, David Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Oliver
Goldsmith, Edmund and Richard Burke, Hickey, with two or three
others, constituted our party. At one of these meetings, an idea
was suggested of extemporary epitaphs upon the parties present; pen
and ink were called for, and Garrick, offhand, wrote an epitaph
with a good deal of humour, upon poor Goldsmith, who was the first
in jest, as he proved to be in reality, that we committed to the
grave. The Dean also gave him an epitaph, and Sir Joshua
illuminated the Dean's verses with a sketch of his bust in pen and
ink, inimitably caricatured. Neither Johnson nor Burke wrote
anything, and when I perceived that Oliver was rather sore, and
seemed to watch me with that kind of attention which indicated his
expectation of something in the same kind of burlesque with theirs;
I thought it time to press the joke no further, and wrote a few
couplets at a side-table, which, when I had finished, and was
called upon by the company to exhibit, Goldsmith, with much
agitation, besought me to spare him; and I was about to tear them,
when Johnson wrested them out of my hand, and in a loud voice read
them at the table. I have now lost recollection of them, and, in
fact, they were little worth remembering; but as they were serious
and complimentary, the effect upon Goldsmith was the more pleasing
for being so entirely unexpected. The concluding line, which was
the only one I can call to mind, was:

"All mourn the poet, I lament the man.

"This I recollect, because he repeated it several times, and seemed
much gratified by it. At our next meeting he produced his epitaphs
... and this was the last time he ever enjoyed the company of his
friends."

* * * * *

Will's Coffee-house, the predecessor of Button's, and even more
celebrated than that coffee-house, was kept by William Urwin. It
first had the title of the Red Cow, then of the Rose, and, we
believe, is the same house alluded to in the pleasant story in the
second number of the _Tatler_. "Supper and friends expect we at the
Rose."

Dean Lockier has lef