{71} Mr. Whitbread—it need hardly be added for the present generation of Londoners—was a celebrated brewer. Fifty years hence, and the allusion in the text may require a note which, perhaps even now (1854), is scarcely out of place. {74} “Winsor’s patent gas”—at that time in its infancy. The first place illumined by it was [Jan. 28, 1807] the Carlton-house side of Pall Mall; the second, Bishopsgate Street. The writer attended a lecture given by the inventor: the charge of admittance was three shillings, but, as the inventor was about to apply to parliament, members of both houses were admitted gratis. The writer and a fellow-jester assumed the parts of senators at a short notice. “Members of parliament!” was their important ejaculation at the door of entrance. “What places, gentlemen?” “Old Sarum and Bridgewater.” “Walk in, gentlemen.” Luckily, the real Simon Pures did not attend. This Pall Mall illumination was further noticed in _Horace in London_:— “And Winsor lights, with flame of gas. Home, to King’s Place, his mother.” {77} “Ticket-nights.” This phrase is probably unintelligible to the untheatrical portion of the community, which may now be said to be all the world except the actors. Ticket-nights are those whereon the inferior actors club for a benefit: each distributes as many tickets of admission as he is able among his friends. A motley assemblage is the consequence; and as each actor is encouraged by his own set, who are not in general play-going people, the applause comes (as Chesterfield says of Pope’s attempts at wit) “generally unseasonably, and too often unsuccessfully.” {79} Originally:—“Back to the _bottom leaping with a bound_,” altered 1833. {81} “This journal was, at the period in question, rather remarkable for the use of the figure called by the rhetoricians _catachresis_. The Bard of Avon may be quoted in justification of its adoption, when he writes of taking arms against a sea, and seeking a bubble in the mouth of a cannon. The _Morning Post_, in the year 1812, congratulated its readers upon having stripped off Cobbett’s mask and discovered his cloven foot; adding, that it was high time to give the hydra-head of Faction a rap on the knuckles!” {85} The Rev. George Crabbe.—The writer’s first interview with this poet, who may be designated Pope in worsted stockings, took place at William Spencer’s villa at Petersham, close to what that gentleman called his gold-fish pond, though it was scarcely three feet in diameter, throwing up a _jet d’eau_ like a thread. The venerable bard, seizing both the hands of his satirist exclaimed with a good-humoured laugh, “Ah! my old enemy, how do you do?” In the course of conversation, he expressed great astonishment at his popularity in London; adding, “In my own village they think nothing of me.” The subject happening to be the inroads of time upon beauty, the writer quoted the following lines:—