showed specimens, promised to
patronize Roubiliac through life, and he faithfully performed this
promise. Young Gainsborough, who spent three years amid the works
of the painters in St. Martin's-lane, Hayman, and Cipriani, who
were all eminently convival, were, in all probability, frequenters
of Slaughter's. Smith tells us that Quin and Hayman were
inseparable friends, and so convival, that they seldom parted till
daylight.

Mr. Cunningham relates that here, "in early life, Wilkie would
enjoy a small dinner at a small cost. I have been told by an old
frequenter of the house, that Wilkie was always the last dropper-in
for dinner, and that he was never seen to dine in the house by
daylight. The truth is, he slaved at his art at home till the last
glimpse of daylight had disappeared."

Haydon was accustomed, in the early days of his fitful career, to
dine here with Wilkie. In his "Autobiography," in the year 1808,
Haydon writes: "This period of our lives was one of great
happiness; painting all day, then dining at the Old Slaughter
Chop-house, then going to the Academy until eight to fill up the
evening, then going home to tea--that blessing of a studious
man--talking over respective exploits, what he, Wilkie, had been
doing and what I had been doing, and, then frequently to relieve
our minds fatigued by their eight and twelve hours' work, giving
vent to the most extraordinary absurdities. Often have we made
rhymes on odd names, and shouted with laughter at each new line
that was added. Sometimes lazily inclined after a good dinner, we
have lounged about, near Drury Lane or Covent Garden, hesitating
whether to go in, and often have I (knowing first that there was
nothing I wished to see) assumed a virtue I did not possess, and
pretending moral superiority, preached to Wilkie on the weakness of
not resisting such temptations for the sake of our art and our
duty, and marched him off to his studies, when he was longing to
see Mother Goose."

J.T. Smith refers to Old Slaughter's as "formerly the rendezvous of
Pope, Dryden and other wits, and much frequented by several
eminently clever men of his day."

Thither came Ware, the architect, who, when a little sickly boy,
was apprenticed to a chimney-sweeper, and was seen chalking the
stree