The very earliest of one’s literary recollections must be the acquisition of the alphabet; and in the knowledge of the first rudiments I was placed on a par with the Learned Pig, by two maiden ladies that were called Hogsflesh. The circumstance would be scarcely worth mentioning, but that being a day boarder, and taking my dinner with the family, I became aware of a Baconian brother, who was never mentioned except by his Initial, and was probably the prototype of the sensitive “Mr. H.” in Lamb’s unfortunate farce. The school in question was situated in Token-house Yard, a convenient distance for a native of the Poultry, or Birchin-lane, I forget which, and in truth am not particularly anxious to be more certainly acquainted with my parish. It was a metropolitan one, however, which is recorded without the slightest repugnance: firstly, for that, practically, I had no choice in the matter; and secondly, because, theoretically, I would as lief have been a native of London as of Stoke Pogis or little Pedlington. If such local prejudices be of any worth, the balance ought to be in favour of the capital. The Dragon of Bow Church, or Gresham’s Grasshopper, is as good a terrestrial sign to be born under as the dunghill cock on a village steeple. Next to being a citizen of the world, it must be the best thing to be born a citizen of the world’s greatest city. To a lover of his kind, it should be a welcome dispensation that cast his nativity amidst the greatest congregation of the species; but a literary man should exult rather than otherwise that he first saw the light--or perhaps the fog--in the same metropolis as Milton, Gray, De Foe, Pope, Byron, Lamb, and other town-born authors, whose fame has nevertheless triumphed over the Bills of Mortality. In such a goodly company I cheerfully take up my livery; and especially as Cockneyism, properly so called, appears to be confined to no particular locality or station in life. Sir Walter Scott has given a splendid instance of it in an Orcadian, who prayed to the Lord to bless his own tiny ait, “not forgetting the neighbouring island of Great Britain:” and the most recent example of the style I have met with, was in the Memoirs of Sir William Knighton, being an account of sea perils and sufferings during a passage across the Irish Channel by “the First Gentleman in Europe.”