society, and said with a sigh, "The man who would do that would cut a man's throat." Sir Godfrey Kneller, the great Court painter of the reigns of William and Anne, was a member; and he painted for his friend Tonson the portraits of forty-two gentlemen of the Kit-Kat, including Dryden, who died a year after it started. The forty-two portraits, painted three-quarter size (hence called Kit-Kat), to suit the walls of Tonson's villa at Barn Elms, still exist, and are treasured by Mr. R.W. Baker, a representative of the Tonson family, at Hertingfordbury, in Hertfordshire. Among the lesser men of this distinguished club we must include Pope's friends, the "knowing Walsh" and "Granville the polite." As at the "Devil," "the tribe of Ben" must have often discussed the downfall of Lord Bacon, the poisoning of Overbury, the war in the Palatinate, and the murder of Buckingham; so in Shire Lane, opposite, the talk must have run on Marlborough's victories, Jacobite plots, and the South-Sea Bubble; Addison must have discussed Swift, and Steele condemned the littleness of Pope. It was the custom of this aristocratic club every year to elect some reigning beauty as a toast. To the queen of the year the gallant members wrote epigrammatic verses, which were etched with a diamond on the club glasses. The most celebrated of these toasts were the four daughters of the Duke of Marlborough--Lady Godolphin, Lady Sunderland (generally known as "the Little Whig"), Lady Bridgewater, and Lady Monthermer. Swift's friend, Mrs. Long, was another; and so was a niece of Sir Isaac Newton. The verses seem flat and dead now, like flowers found between the leaves of an old book; but in their time no doubt they had their special bloom and fragrance. The most tolerable are those written by Lord Halifax on "the Little Whig":-- "All nature's charms in Sunderland appear, Bright as her eyes and as her reason clear; Yet still their force, to man not safely known, Seems undiscovered to herself alone." Yet how poor after all is this laboured compliment in comparison to a sentence of Steele's on some lady of rank whose virtues he honoured,--"that even to have known her was in itself a liberal education." But few stories connected with the Kit-Kat meetings are to be dug out of books, though no doubt many snatches of the best conversation are embalmed in the _Spectator_ and the _Tatler_. Yet Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whom Pope first admired and then reviled, tells one pleasant incident of her childhood that connects her with the great club.