A short form upon these occasions is felt to want reverence; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the charge of impertinence.  I do not quite approve of the epigrammatic conciseness with which that equivocal wag (but my pleasant school-fellow) C.V.L., when importuned for a grace, used to inquire, first slyly leering down the table, “Is there no clergyman here?”—­significantly adding, “thank G——.”  Nor do I think our old form at school quite pertinent, where we were used to preface our bald bread and cheese suppers with a preamble, connecting with that humble blessing a recognition of benefits the most awful and overwhelming to the imagination which religion has to offer. Non tunc illis erat locus. I remember we were put to it to reconcile the phrase “good creatures,” upon which the blessing rested, with the fare set before us, wilfully understanding that expression in a low and animal sense,—­till some one recalled a legend, which told how in the golden days of Christ’s, the young Hospitallers were wont to have smoking joints of roast meat upon their nightly boards, till some pious benefactor, commiserating the decencies, rather than the palates, of the children, commuted our flesh for garments, and gave us—­horresco referens—­trowsers instead of mutton.

MY FIRST PLAY

At the north end of Cross-court there yet stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office.  This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit entrance to old Drury—­Garrick’s Drury—­all of it that is left.  I never pass it without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see my first play.  The afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease.  With what a beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation!  I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it.

We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us.  He kept the oil shop (now Davies’s) at the corner of Featherstone-building, in Holborn.  F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his rank.  He associated in those days with John Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy; if John (which is quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of his manner from my godfather.  He was also known to, and visited by, Sheridan.  It was to his house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first wife on her elopement with him from a boarding-school at Bath—­the beautiful Maria Linley.  My parents were present (over a quadrille table) when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge.—­From either of these connexions it may be inferred that my godfather