Ugly Dunning, afterwards the famous Lord Ashburton, entered the Middle Temple in 1752, and was called four years later, in 1756. Lord Chancellor Thurlow used to describe him wittily as "the knave of clubs." Home Tooke, Dunning, and Kenyon were accustomed to dine together, during the vacation, at a little eating-house in the neighbourhood of Chancery Lane for the sum of sevenpence-halfpenny each. "As to Dunning and myself," said Tooke, "we were generous, for we gave the girl who waited upon us a penny a piece; but Kenyon, who always knew the value of money, sometimes rewarded her with a halfpenny, and sometimes with a promise." Blackstone, before dedicating his powers finally to the study of the law in which he afterwards became so famous, wrote in Temple chambers his "Farewell to the Muse:"-- "Lulled by the lapse of gliding floods, Cheer'd by the warbling of the woods, How blest my days, my thoughts how free, In sweet society with thee! Then all was joyous, all was young, And years unheeded roll'd along; But now the pleasing dream is o'er-- These scenes must charm me now no more. Lost to the field, and torn from you, Farewell!--a long, a last adieu! * * * * * Then welcome business, welcome strife, Welcome the cares, the thorns of life, The visage wan, the purblind sight, The toil by day, the lamp by night, The tedious forms, the solemn prate, The pert dispute, the dull debate, The drowsy bench, the babbling hall,-- For thee, fair Justice, welcome all!" That great orator, Edmund Burke, was entered at the Middle Temple in 1747, when the heads of the Scotch rebels of 1745 were still fresh on the spikes of Temple Bar, and he afterwards came to keep his terms in 1750. In 1756 he occupied a two-pair chamber at the "Pope's Head," the shop of Jacob Robinson, the Twickenham poet's publisher, just within the Inner Temple gateway. Burke took a dislike, however, perhaps fortunately for posterity, to the calf-skin books, and was never called to the bar. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, an Irishman even more brilliant, but unfortunately far less prudent, than Burke, entered his name in the Middle Temple books a few days before his elopement with Miss Linley. "A wit," says Archdeacon Nares, in his pleasant book, "Heraldic Anomalies," "once chalked the following lines on the Temple gate:"-- "As by the Templars' hold you go, The horse and lamb display'd In emblematic figures show The merits of their trade. "The clients may infer from thence How just is their profession; The lamb sets forth their innocence, The horse their expedition. "Oh, happy Britons! happy isle! Let foreign nations say, Where you get justice without guile And law without delay." A rival wag replied to these lively lines by the following severer ones:--