On the right hand then of the Editor sits Elia, of the pleasant smile, and the quick eyes--Procter said of them that “they looked as if they could pick up pins and needles”--and a wit as quick as his eyes, and sure, as Hazlitt described, to stammer out the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening. Next to him, shining verdantly out from the grave-coloured suits of the literati, like a patch of turnips amidst stubble and fallow, behold our Jack i’ the Green--John Clare! In his bright, grass-coloured coat, and yellow waistcoat (there are greenish stalks too, under the table), he looks a very Cowslip, and blooms amongst us as Goldsmith must have done in his peach-blossom. No wonder the door-keeper of the Soho Bazaar, seeing that _very countrified_ suit, linked arm-in-arm with the Editorial sables, made a boggle at admitting them into his repository, having seen, perchance, such a made-up Peasant “playing at playing” at thimble-rig about the Square. No wonder the gentleman’s gentleman, in the drab-coat and sealing-wax smalls, at W---- ’s, was for cutting off our Green Man, who was modestly the last in ascending the stairs as an interloper, though he made amends afterwards by waiting almost exclusively on the Peasant, perfectly convinced that he was some eccentric Notable of the Corinthian order, disguised in Rustic. Little wonder either, that in wending homewards on the same occasion through the Strand, the Peasant and Elia, _Sylvanus et Urban_, linked comfortably together; there arose the frequent cry of “Look at Tom and Jerry--there goes Tom and Jerry!” for truly, Clare in his square-cut green coat, and Lamb in his black, were not a little suggestive of Hawthorn and Logic, in the plates to “Life in London.” But to return to the table. Elia--much more of House Lamb than of Grass Lamb--avowedly caring little or nothing for Pastoral; cottons, nevertheless, very kindly to the Northamptonshire Poet, and still more to his ale, pledging him again and again as “Clarissimus,” and “Princely Clare,” and sometimes so lustily, as to make the latter cast an anxious glance into his tankard. By his bright happy look, the Helpstone Visitor is inwardly contrasting the unlettered country company of Clod, and Hodge and Podge, with the delights of “London” society Elia, and Barry, and Herbert, and Mr. Table Talk, _cum multis_--_aliis_--i.e. a multiplicity of all. But besides the tankard, the two “drouthie neebors” discuss Poetry in general[10], and Montgomery’s “Common Lot” in particular, Lamb insisting on the beauty of the tangental sharp turn at “O! she was fair!” thinking, mayhap, of his own Alice W----, and Clare swearing “Dal” (a clarified d--n) “Dal! if it isn’t like a Dead Man preaching out of his coffin!” Anon, the Humorist begins to banter the Peasant on certain “Clare-obscurities” in his own verses, originating in a contempt for the rules of Priscian, whereupon the accused, thinking with Burns,