Haymarket.

Besides this personal attack, various subjects were debated here
in the manner of the Robin Hood Society, which filled the Orator's
pocket, and proved his rhetoric of some value.

Here is one of his combats with Foote. The subject was Duelling In
Ireland, which Macklin had illustrated as far as the reign of
Elizabeth. Foote cried, "Order;" he had a question to put. "Well,
Sir," said Macklin, "what have you to say on this subject," "I
think, Sir" said Foote, "this matter might be settled in a few
words. What o'clock is it, Sir?" Macklin could not possibly see
what the clock had to do with a dissertation upon Duelling, but
gruffly reported the hour to be half-past nine. "Very well," said
Foote, "about this time of the night every gentleman in Ireland
that can possibly afford it is in his third bottle of claret, and
therefore in a fair way of getting drunk; and from drunkenness
proceeds quarrelling, and from quarrelling, duelling, and so
there's an end of the chapter." The company were much obliged to
Foote for his interference, the hour being considered; though
Macklin did not relish this abridgment.

The success of Foote's fun upon Macklin's Lectures, led him to
establish a summer entertainment of his own at the Haymarket. He
took up Macklin's notion of applying Greek tragedy to modern
subjects, and the squib was so successful that Foote cleared by it
500L in five nights, while the great Piazza Coffee-room in Covent
Garden was shut up, and Macklin in the _Gazette_ as a bankrupt.

But when the great plan of Mr. Macklin proved abortive, when as he
said in a former prologue, upon a nearly similar occasion--

From scheming, fretting, famine and despair.
We saw to grace restor'd an exiled player;

when the town was sated with the seemingly-concocted quarrel
between the two theatrical geniuses, Macklin locked his doors, all
animosity was laid aside, and they came and shook hands at the
Bedford; the group resumed their appearance, and, with a new
master, a new set of customers was seen.

* * * * *

Tom King's Coffee-house was one of the old night-houses of Covent
Garden Market; it was a rude shed immediately beneath the portico
of St. Paul's Church, and was one "well known to all gentlemen to
whom be