At these parties, a strange and talented group never failed to present themselves. All were men of genius, but exhibited, in their respective persons, proofs of the amazing rancour that subsists between genius and gentility. Among them was a lively Irishman, named O’Blarney, a reporter for the daily press, with sandy hair, a nose that turned up like a fish-hook, and a mouth which, from its extensive dimensions, afforded the most copious facilities for grinning. This promising young Papist, whose estates unfortunately lay in the most Protestant part of Ireland, was the very gem of Mr. Spimkins’ parties; and as he mixed much in fashionable society, and could beat even a negro in dancing, his presence never failed to create a lively sensation at Crutched-Friars. Another of the old gentleman’s guests was a rising versifier of twenty-two, whose appearance would have been sentiment itself, had not a pair of dingy whiskers, which grew back towards his ears, as if enamoured of the latter’s unusual length, given him a slight touch of the grotesque. As it was, his fine, open, full-blown face, resembled a cherub on a country tomb-stone. It would be injustice to acknowledged ability were I here to omit the mention of another poet, whose genius taking an uxorious turn, exploded in admiring apostrophes to his wife. This bard displayed infinite sweetness of versification--as the extracts from the different reviews, inserted, accidentally, at the end of his volume--assured him. There were no intemperate sallies, no startling originality, no audacious imagery in his rhymes; all was sweetly and agreeably uniform, like the features on a barber’s block. Such, with the addition of three historians from St. Mary Axe, two political economists from Long Acre, a pastoral writer from Wapping, and an essayist from Houndsditch, were the _literati_ whose dazzling abilities illumined the fortunate neighbourhood of Crutched-Friars. Old Spimkins, meanwhile, to whom the whole scene was a novelty that well nigh took away his breath, kept moving backwards and forwards among his guests, oscillating in spirits, between a sigh and a smile; at one moment looking grave and dignified, like the Scotch Highlander at a tobacconist’s; at another, simpering sweetly and benignly, and perpetrating, whenever he ventured on a remark, the strangest possible blunders. The three French consuls he invariably mistook for the three per cent, consols; quoted Moore’s Almanack in illustration of Moore’s Melodies; inquired whether those two great poets, Hogg and Bacon, were not of the same family; and, when asked his opinion of Crabbe, gave a decided preference to lobster.