Nor did he confine himself to antiquities. Two years had scarcely elapsed since the appearance of his last work, when he produced his octavo volume on a religious subject:—‘The Cloud of Witnesses, or the Genealogies of Scripture, confirming the truth of holy history and humanity of Christ.’ For many a long year was this essay prefixed to the English translation of the Bible and King James vested the copyright of it in the author and his heirs _for ever_;—we emphatically say “for ever,” as a hint to the pirate publishers. “What could be expected from a tailor, Master Nicolson?” Well, were you yourself a better man? Did you live half a century and seven years in harmony with your wife? and did eighteen children—twelve sons and six daughters—call you father? What could be expected from a tailor? Why, thou sorry slanderer, John Speed excelled thee in all things. A dozen and a half of his children stood at his grave-side, in St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, in 1629; and above that grave his name lives, whereas thine is forgotten. “What could be expected of a tailor?” Whatever might be expected, he performed much. The most famous of his many sons was that Dr. John Speed, who was patronized by Laud; and from him, through Colonel Speed, descended that Countess de Viri, wife of a Sardinian ambassador in London, whom Lord Cobham adopted as his child, after the death of her own father the Colonel. To her visit to Gray we owe that charming ‘Long Story’ narrated by Gray, and which consequently would never have been written but for John Speed, the tailor and antiquary, of Farington. The ladies are described as “A brace of warriors not in buff, But rustling in their silks and tissues.” Of Speed’s fair descendant the poet sings:— “The other Amazon, kind Heaven Had arm’d with spirit, wit, and satire; But Cobham had the polish given, And tipp’d her arrows with good-nature.” Being on the subject of dress, I may add, that Speed’s great-granddaughter was attired “in bonnet blue and capuchine;” and I may further and finally remark, that to have written history and divinity with a learned pen, and to have been remotely the cause of the authorship of Gray’s ‘Long Story,’ may fairly save Speed, and indeed the fellow-craftsmen who should hold him in honour, from such a _nez-retroussé_ sort of sarcasm as “What could be expected from a tailor?” Speed the tailor is remembered when Bishop Nicolson is forgotten. We will pass from him to consider a tailor’s son of another kidney,—garrulous, vain, rakish, clever, and ever-welcome Samuel Pepys. SAMUEL PEPYS, THE OFFICIAL TAILOR. “All gentlemen That love society, love me; all purses That wit and pleasure opens, are my tenants.” FLETCHER: _Wit without Money_.