the word calling was incidentally mentioned by the latter, when Taylor, with great quickness, interrupted him with, "Talking of callings, my dear boy, your father was a great dramatic English Merchant;' now your dealings are and always will be those of a small Coal-man. I think I had you there! What? have I paid you for your 'None were blind enough, eh ?' Colman was evidently hurt.

Hackett, the American comedian, had been engaged by Mr. Bunn, at Drury-lane. Being in want of a new part, he, or some one for him, had made an alteration in Colman's comedy of Who wants a Guinea? substituting a character, Solomon Swap, for the original Solomon Gundy. This amalgamation had to undergo the inspection of the Examiner of Plays, who was also the author of the comedy. Here was a situation! Colman thus addressed Bunn, the ostensible manager, on the subject:

SIR,

In respect to the alterations made by Mr. Hackett, a most appropriate name on the present occasion, were the established play of any living dramatist except myself so mutilated, I should express to the Lord Chamberlain, the grossness and unfairness of the manager who encouraged such a proceeding; but as the character of Solomon Gundy was originally a part of my own writing, I shall request his Grace to license "the rubbish," as you call it, which you have sent me. Your obedient Servant,

G. COLMAN.

He was an admirable punster: Sheridan once said, when George made a successful hit, "I hate a pun, but Colman almost reconciles me to the infliction."

"Oh

He was once asked if he knew Theodore Hook? yes,' was his reply, "Hook and I [eye] are old asso

Colman's humorous poetry has been as popular as his plays. He published two collections, the Broad Grins and Poetical Vagaries, followed by others. These pieces display lively and sparkling wit and observation; and they were once very popular as "Recitations" on the stage, and in private circles. Such pastime has, however, almost disappeared or ceased to please; but many a middle-aged reader may recollect to have enjoyed Colman's Newcastle Apothecary, and his Lodgings for Single Gentlemen. He may also have been

entertained with the metrical version of the fable of the Old Man and the Ass, another popular recitation, without knowing that for this piece-The Folly of attempting to Please all Mankind-we are indebted to the versatile genius of Samuel Foote.

We get a glimpse of the popularity of such things in John Britton's Autobiography, where he tells us that in 1797, he was a member of the Spouting Club at Jacob's Well, and a star, too, from selecting and reciting comic tales, prologues, and characters, written by Peter Pindar, George Colman, and others. He recited upwards of fifty times at the Spouting Club, at private theatres, and in friendly parties, Colman's famous Address, called British Loyalty, or a Squeeze for St. Paul's, i. e., the public visit of George III. and the Royal Family to St. Paul's Cathedral, on the King's recovery from a state of insanity. Many pieces were written on the occasion-Thomas Warton, poet-laureate, produced an Ode-but neither excited such reiterated applause as did Colman's lines, originally written for John Bannister, jun., and repeated by him many nights. Several years afterwards, Britton gave this recitation with equal success; it describes the perils of a dense crowd-parts in the phraseology of an Irishman, a Scotchman, a Welshman, a Jew, an old man of ninety-two, and a loyal sailor.*

Colman, also, in 1819, reprinted his volume of Broad Grins, consisting of "My Nightgown and Slippers," with additional tales. Twenty years ago, the Broad Grins had reached its eighth edition.

MORRIS THE HUMANITARIAN.

This eccentric gentleman, the well-known Humphrey Morris, resided at Grove House, Chiswick, which subsequently became the villa of the Rev. Robert Lowth (son of Bishop Lowth), an old college friend of George Colman the Younger, who relates the following account of the house and grounds, in which were a riding-house, and stables for thirty horses.

"I remember seeing this place, and the then master of it, when I was a boy, by riding thither with a relation, a lawyer,

They who only knew John Britton by his topographical and architectural publications, may smile at this eccentric commencement of his long life of industry and integrity: he preserved to the last his cheerful and vivacious turn of mind. He died in his 86th year.

BB

who went there upon business. On entering the court-yard, we were assailed by a very numerous pack of curs in full cry. This was occasioned by Mr. Morris's humanity towards animals. All the stray mongrels which happened to follow him in London, he sent down to this villa, where they were petted and pampered. He had a mare in his stables called Curious, who, though attended and fed with the greatest care, was almost a skeleton from old age, being turned of sixty. Many of his horses enjoyed a luxurious sinecure. During the summer, they were turned into his park, or rather paddock, at Chiswick, where, in sultry weather, they reposed beneath the shade of the trees, while a boy was employed to flap the flies from their hides. The honours shown by Mr. Morris to his beasts of burden were only inferior to those which Caligula lavished on his charger.'

The property was bequeathed by Mr. Morris to Mrs. Lowth, about the year 1790, under these restrictions: all the horses and dogs on the premises were to be carefully fed and attended till they died a natural death, and his own servant was to have two rooms in the house as long as he lived. In default of such attention to the animals Mrs. Lowth would only have a life-interest in the premises; but if she fulfilled the intentions of the will, the estate would be absolutely at her own disposal. The bequest was fully complied with all the animals and the servant died upon the estate, which was disposed of in 1819. The gardens were once ranked among the finest in England; and the walnut and Spanish chestnut-trees in the paddock yielded fruit which produced eighty pounds in one year.

THE POET HARDING.

Among the eccentrics of Oxford, in Colman the Younger's time, was the poet Harding, a half-crazy creature, well known in most of the colleges. He ran the bellman hard in composition, but could not come up to him in rank or in riches; living chiefly upon what he could get from the undergraduates, by engaging to find instantaneously a rhyme for any word in the English language; and when he could not find, he coined one; as in the case of rhimney for chimney, which he called a wild rhyme. To this improvisare talent, he added that of personification: sometimes he walked about with a scythe in his hand, as Time; sometimes with an anchor, as

Hope. One day, he was met with a huge broken brick, and some bits of thatch, upon the crown of his hat; and when asked by Colman for a solution of this prosopopcia, "Sir," said he, "to-day is the anniversary of the celebrated Doctor Goldsmith's death, and I am now in the character of his Deserted Village."

HAPPY RESOURCE.

In extraordinary times of tumult, it has been remarked that public amusements in cities have been supported rather than neglected. George Colman the Elder, relates that during the Riots in London in 1780, on the 7th of June, on which day and night desolation had attained its climax, and the metropolis is said to have been seen from one spot blazing in thirtysix different parts, the receipt of the Haymarket Theatre exceeded twenty pounds! How, instead of twenty pounds' worth of spectators, twenty persons, or one person, could have calmly paid money to witness, in the midst of this general dismay, a theatrical entertainment, may appear astonishing. During the French Revolutions, such instances have not been rare; and have been attributed to the eagerness of the people to fly from the terrific realities of rapine, fire, and slaughter, and thus beguile them of their terrors.

A TRIFLING ADDITION.

Dr. Kitchiner was famous for his Saturday dinners in Warren-street, to which none but the learned in luxurious living were invited. On the chimney-glass in his refectory was posted the following notice :

Come at seven,

Go at eleven.

One of the party was George Colman the Younger, who once gave to the distich, by the clandestine interpolation of a little pronoun, a very extended meaning-viz.

Go (it) at eleven!

THE TWO HARVEYS.

It is odd, (says the younger George,) that I should have known two Harveys, whose callings, though so very different, caused both one and the other to be daily and hourly witnesses of scenes which smell of mortality: the first being the learned leech, under whose care my father recovered from the

first attack of his illness at Margate; the second, the landlord of the Black Dog at Bedfont, in Middlesex, famed for his fish-sauce and his knowledge and practice of cookery. His well-frequented inn was as well-known as were the couple of yews clipped into the form of peacocks, and the date 1704, in the adjoining churchyard. In 1802 Colman, while sojourning at this inn, scrawled the following lines:

Harvey, whose inn commands a view

Of Bedfont's church and churchyard too,
Where yew-trees into peacocks shorn,
In vegetable terror mourn:

Is liable, no doubt, to glooms,
From "Meditations on the Tombs."
But while he meditates, he cooks,
Thus both to quick and dead he looks;
Turning his mind to nothing save
Thoughts on man's gravy, and his grave.
Long may he keep from churchyard holes
Our bodies, with his Sauce for Soles!
Long may he hinder Death from beckoning
His guests to settle their last reckoning !

SIZE OF THEATRES.

George Colman the Younger, says: "My father wrote the preface to his translation of Terence's Comedies long before he thought of being proprietor of the Haymarket Theatre: he could not therefore, at that time, have given an exparte opinion, when he said, in that preface, speaking of the moderns, that by contracting the dimensions of their theatres, although they have a good deal abated the magnificence of the spectacle, they have been able to approach much nearer to the truth and simplicity of representation.

"It is curious to observe how, after a certain time, the moderns of Drury-lane and Covent-garden returned all at once to this magnificence of the ancients of Greece and Rome; for immediately after my father's demise, I opened the Haymarket Theatre, in 1795, with an occasional piece,* which ridiculed the extended dimensions of the two principal London playhouses, as follows:

When people appear

Quite unable to hear,

'Tis undoubtedly needless to talk ;

*New Way at the Old Haymarket; the first scene of which is still acted under the title of Sylvester Daggerwood.