claim to one of two things; in the first place, sir, he must have a naturally fine ear for music, or secondly, an early education, exclusively devoted to that study. But no one ever suspected Mr. Pinch of refined sensibility; and his education, as we all know, has been a little at large. Then again, why should he of all other things be always singing “Rosy Ann,” and “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,” till one is sick of hearing them? It’s preposterous, and I mean to tell him so. You know, I’m sure, without my hinting it, that in the first of these admired songs, the sentiment is voluptuous and tender, and in the last patriotic. Now Pinch’s romance never wandered from behind his counter, and his patriotism lies in his breeches’ pocket. Sir, the utmost he should aspire to would be to play upon the Jews’ harp!’ This story of the Jews’ harp tickled some of Pinch’s friends, who gave him various hints of it, which nearly drove him mad, till he discovered what it was; for though no jest or sarcasm ever had the least effect upon him, yet he cannot bear to think that there should be any joke of this kind about him, and he not in the secret: it makes against that _knowing_ character which he so much affects. Pinch is in one respect a complete specimen of a _Cockney_. He never has any thing to say, and yet is never at a loss for an answer. That is, his pertness keeps exact pace with his dulness. His friend, the Doctor, used to complain of this in good set terms.—‘You can never make any thing of Mr. Pinch,’ he would say. ‘Apply the most cutting remark to him, and his only answer is, “_The same to you, sir_.” If Shakespear were to rise from the dead to confute him, I firmly believe it would be to no purpose. I assure you, I have found it so. I once thought indeed I had him at a disadvantage, but I was mistaken. You shall hear, sir. I had been reading the following sentiment in a modern play—“The Road to Ruin,” by the late Mr. Holcroft—“For how should the soul of Socrates inhabit the body of a stocking-weaver?” This was pat to the point (you know our friend is a hosier and haberdasher) I came full with it to keep an appointment I had with Pinch, began a game, quarrelled with him in the middle of it on purpose, went up stairs to dress, and as I was washing my hands in the slop-basin (watching my opportunity) turned coolly round and said, “It’s impossible there should be any sympathy between you and me, Mr. Pinch: for as the poet says, how should the soul of Socrates inhabit the body of a stocking-weaver?” “Ay,” says he, “does the poet say so? _then the same to you, sir_!” I was confounded, I gave up the attempt to conquer him in wit or argument. He would pose the Devil, sir, by his “_The same to you, sir_.”’ We had another joke against Richard Pinch, to which the Doctor was not a party, which was, that being asked after the respectability of the _Hole in the Wall_, at the time that Randall took it, he answered quite