He met with numerous little adventures during these night-drives after the theatre: sometimes he fell asleep as soon as he had turned out of town, and only awoke when he arrived at his own gate. One night he was so fatigued with his performance that he still continued to sleep, when the horse, a very steady one, who could always find his way home without assistance, had stopped at the gate. The best of it was, that upon this particular night, the man-servant, who always sat up for him, had fallen asleep too; so there sat he slumbering on one side of the fence, while on the other side, not six feet off, sat his master in the gig, fast asleep too; and so they both remained, until the violent snorting of the horse, which probably thought it high time to turn in for the night, awoke the man, who roused the master, and speedily set all to rights. But as one circumstance which occurred to him during these night journeys will be narrated at greater length in another part of the volume, we will leave the subject for the present. He very grievously offended Mr. Fawcett, in March, 1808, from a very slight cause, and without the remotest intention of doing so. Fawcett called one afternoon at his cottage at Finchley, on his road to town from his own house at Totteridge, which was only two miles distant from Grimaldi's, and asked Grimaldi to play for his benefit, then close at hand: this he most willingly promised to do. "Ah," said Fawcett, "but understand I don't want you to play clown or anything of that sort: I want you to do Brocket in the 'Son-in-Law.'" Grimaldi demurred a little to this proposition, considering that as he had made a great hit in one branch of his profession, he could not do better than retain his standing in it, without attempting some new line in which, by failure, he might injure his reputation. Not wishing to disoblige Mr. Fawcett if he could possibly help it, he replied that he must decline giving an answer at that moment, but that in the course of a day or two he would write. Having consulted his friends in the mean time, and being strongly advised by them not to appear in the character Mr. Fawcett had mentioned, he wrote, declining in respectful terms to do so, and stating the grounds of his objection. Odd as it may appear, the little circumstance angered him much: he never afterwards behaved towards him with any cordiality, and for the three years immediately following, never so much as spoke to or noticed him whenever they chanced to meet.