[#] Not to be confounded with the ’Sublime Society of Steaks,’ founded a few years after the club, and of which we shall speak more fully presently as the more important of the two associations. The Beefsteak Society, or the ’Sublime Society of Beefsteaks,’ as they chose to designate themselves, whilst severely objecting to be called a club, originated with George Lambert, the scene-painter of Covent Garden Theatre during Rich’s management (1735), where Lambert often dined from a steak cooked on the fire in his painting-room, in which he was frequently joined by his visitors. This led to the foundation of the society in a room in the theatre. Afterwards the place of meeting was at the Shakespeare tavern in the Piazza, and subsequently at the Lyceum, and on its destruction by fire (1830), at the Bedford Hotel, and on its being rebuilt in 1834, at the theatre again. The members used to meet on Saturdays, from November to the end of June, to partake of a dinner of beefsteaks. The room in which they met was appropriately fitted up, the doors, wainscoting and roof, of English oak, being ornamented with gridirons; Lambert’s original gridiron, saved from two fires, formed the chief ornament in the centre of the ceiling. Among the members of this society, restricted to twenty-five, were George, Prince of Wales, and his brothers, the Dukes of York and Sussex, Sheridan, Lord Sandwich, Garrick, John Wilkes, the Duke of Argyle, the Duke of Leinster, Alderman Wood, and many other men of note. The club had its president and vice-president, its bishop, who said grace, and its ’boots,’ as the steward was called; the Dukes of Sussex and Leinster in their turn discharged the office of ’boots.’ Its festivals were of a somewhat bacchanalian character; the chief liquors consumed were port and punch, and fun, the more rampant the more relished, followed the feast. They had their bard, or laureate, Captain Morris, who had been in the Life Guards. Here is a stanza of one of his songs: ’Like Britain’s island lies our steak, A sea of gravy bounds it; Shallots, confusedly scattered, make The rockwork that surrounds it. Your isle’s best emblem there behold, Remember ancient story; Be, like your grandsires, first and bold, And live and die with glory.’ Now what can we think of the literary taste then prevailing in the highest quarters, when we are told that this song rendered Morris so great a favourite with the Prince of Wales that he adopted him in the circle of his intimate friends, and made him his constant guest both at Carlton House and the Pavilion at Brighton? Truly, in those days fame and distinction were lightly earned! But does not our own time admire, or pretend to admire, the jerky platitudes of a Tennyson, and the jejune prose, cut up into measured lines, of a Browning as poetry? By the society Morris was presented with an elegant silver bowl for his ’pottery.’