‘Well, he’s dead; and there’s a wife and five children, and an invalid aunt, without a halfpenny. I happened to come by the cottage as I was coming here, and I never saw a sadder sight. In one room the poor dead body; in another, women in hysterics, children weeping, and a vile harpy of a landlady standing at the door wanting her money. I paid her something to keep her quiet. That’s why I’m cleaned out, knowing that you generous youths would give me something for the poor man’s wife and family.’ Immediately every hand was put into its owner’s pocket, and Wentworth was content with the result, and he prepared to enjoy himself after the fashion of the room, which was well patronized by gentlemen of the press, including the dreariest of shorthand writers and the most elegant of penny-a-liners. As one went out to deliver his copy another came in who had done so. The climax was reached when there came a gang of Parliamentary reporters from the Gallery with the news of a great division, a Ministerial defeat and a Parliamentary crisis, who seemed inclined to sit up late talking shop. Most of them had a cheerful glass, and when that is indulged in, it is astonishing how witty a man becomes, and what a cause of wit in other men. A good deal of profane language was used, and now and then a little Latin or a scrap of Greek. The atmosphere was as critical as it was clouded with tobacco. Wentworth took part in many a war of words, and ‘Drank delight of battle with his peers.’ The sleepy waiter, reinforced by the sleepy landlord, had hard work to clear the room, which, however, was not done till the milkman might be heard going his early rounds, and the great world of London was preparing for the business of the day. No wonder Wentworth rather liked that sort of life. It had for him the charm of novelty. At any rate, he breathed a freer air than he had ever done before. He could say what he meant. He had lived where that was impossible. There was little free speech or thought in pious circles, either Dissenting or Church, fifty years ago. Happily, the present generation lives and moves in a freer day, when a man is not sent to Coventry on account of honest doubt. The one drawback he felt was that he was rushing to the other extreme. When Johnson was about to write the life of Akenside, he asked Hannah More, as a friend of Sir James Stonehouse, Akenside’s contemporary at the now far-famed borough of Northampton, if she could supply him with any information concerning him. On which she tells us she made an effort to recollect some sayings she had heard reported. This did not suit the Doctor, who impatiently exclaimed: ‘Incident, child—incident is what a biographer wants. Did he break his leg?’