‘I forget whether I have noticed this elsewhere, therefore I will make sure. In the novel “Arundel,” Cumberland has drawn an exact picture of himself as secretary to Halifax, and has made the father of the hero a clergyman and a keen electioneerer--the vilest character in fiction. The laborious exculpation of Parson Cumberland in these Memoirs does not wipe out the scandal of such a picture. In spite of all he says, we cannot help suspecting that Parson Cumberland and Joseph Arundel had a likeness. N.B.--In both novels (_i.e._, “Arundel” and “Henry”) the portrait of a modern clergyman is too true. But it is strange that Cumberland, thus hankering after the Church, should have volunteered two such characters as Joseph Arundel and Claypole.’ ‘Whispering tongues can poison truth,’ and a persistent annotator who writes a legible hand is not easily shaken off. Perhaps the best story in the book is the one about which there is most doubt. I refer to the well-known and often-quoted account of the first night of ‘She Stoops to Conquer,’ and of the famous band of _claqueurs_ who early took their places, determined to see the play through. Cumberland tells the story with the irresistible verve of falsehood--of the early dinner at the ‘Shakespeare Tavern,’ ‘where Samuel Johnson took the chair at the head of a long table, and was the life and soul of the corps’; of the guests assembled, including Fitzherbert (who had committed suicide at an earlier date), of the adjournment to the theatre with Adam Drummond of amiable memory, who ‘was gifted by Nature with the most sonorous and at the same time the most contagious laugh that ever echoed from the human lungs. The neighing of the horse of the son of Hystaspes was a whisper to it; the whole thunder of the theatre could not drown it’; and on the story rolls. It has to be given up. There was a dinner, but it is doubtful whether Cumberland was at it; and as for the proceedings at the theatre, others who were there have pronounced Cumberland’s story a bit of _blague_. According to the newspapers of the day, Cumberland, instead of sitting by Drummond’s side and telling him when to laugh in his peculiar manner, was visibly chagrined by the success of the piece, and as wretched as any man could well be. But Adam Drummond must have been a reality. His laugh still echoes in one’s ears. ALEXANDER KNOX AND THOMAS DE QUINCEY. Amongst the many _bizarre_ things that attended the events which led up to the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland, was the circumstance that Lord Castlereagh’s private secretary during the period should have been that Mr. Alexander Knox whose Remains in four rather doleful volumes were once cherished by a certain school of theologians.