cutting fat bacon still; twenty years more have passed, and there the two fat fellows cut the fat flitches the same as ever. Carve them--if they do not look like an image of eternity, I wot not what does.” [339] In the last ten years of his stage career Bannister travelled with his “Budget” of songs, anecdotes, and imitations, through England, Scotland, and Ireland. [340] The Rev. Stephen Weston, F.R.S. (1747-1830), a well-known antiquary and classical scholar, held the Devonshire livings of Mainhead and Little Hempston, Devon, but left that county after the death of his wife. He engaged in some spirited attempts to translate Gray’s _Elegy_ into Greek, and published his _Elegia Grayiana, Græce_, in 1794. He was fond of the French capital, and published _The Praise of Paris_ in 1803. An old friend of Nollekens, he was present at the funeral so airily described by Smith in his life of the sculptor. [341] Swan _upping_ (or marking) is still carried out yearly on the Thames by the representatives of the Crown and by the Dyers’ and Vintners’ Companies, who have the privilege of keeping swans on the river. Formerly the state barges of the City went up to Staines, and ceremonies were performed. Even to-day the expedition of the swan-markers is picturesque; the skiffs bear the flags of the several authorities, the markers wear flannels and distinguishing jerseys, and the overseers don special tunics and peaked caps. The birds are caught by means of long hooked poles. [342] Tooke did not, therefore, “try the question” of his silver caddy; but had it not been returned he would have done so in his character of the inimitable litigant. “A court of law,” says Hazlitt, in his masterly portrait of Tooke in _The Spirit of the Age_, “was the place where Mr. Tooke made the best figure in public. He might assuredly be said to be ‘native and endued unto that element.’ He had here to stand merely on the defensive: not to advance himself, but to block up the way: not to impress others, but to be himself impenetrable. All he wanted was _negative success_; and to this no one was better qualified to aspire. Cross purposes, _moot-points_, pleas, demurrers, flaws in the indictment, double meanings, cases, inconsequentialities, these were the playthings, the darlings of Mr. Tooke’s mind; and with these he baffled the Judge, dumbfounded the Counsel, and outwitted the Jury. The report of his trial before Lord Kenyon is a masterpiece of acuteness, dexterity, modest assurance, and legal effect. It is much like his examination before the Commissioners of the Income Tax--nothing could be got out of him in either case!”