SHAKSPEARE.

* * * * *

PUNS.

It was a good defence of baskets of game and periodical remittances of Norfolk turkeys, that “Presents endear absents.”

* * * * *

Some one observed, on hearing of the Manchew Tartars, that they must be a race of Cannibals; on which another said, that he concluded the Chinese must be a tribe of the Celtes, (Sell-Teas.)

* * * * *

Bannister being impudently asked, “If he was not a relation of Lord STAIR?” good-humouredly answered, “It must then be by collateral descent.”

* * * * *

A gentleman having received a shot in the Temple, Mr. Theodore Hook remarked that it was a legal wound; an inveterate punster who overheard this never forgave himself for not replying on the spot, “As it was not fatal, it could only have been a Gray’s Inn (grazing) wound.”

* * * * *

TOASTS.

After the battle of Assaye, at a fete, I recollect, on one of these occasions, a rather illiterate character, who used to say that “Father and he fit, caise he sold the beastesses for too little money; so he coummed out a cadet,” sat as vice-president; the toast of “General Wellesley, and the heroes of Assaye,” was, as usual, given from the chair; when Mr. Vice, rising majestically, and holding aloft his brimming glass, with a sonorous voice, and north-country accent, echoed the toast in the words, “General Wellesley, and here he is I say!”—­Twelve Years’ Military Adventures, &c.

* * * * *

THE MUG-HOUSE CLUB.

(From “A Journey through England,” 1722.)

In the City of London, almost every parish hath its separate club, where the citizens, after the fatigue of the day is over in their shops, and on the Exchange, unbend their thoughts before they go to bed.

But the most diverting, or amusing of all, is the Mug-House-Club in Long-Acre, where, every Wednesday and Saturday, a mixture of gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen, meet in a great room, and are seldom under a hundred.

They have a grave old gentleman in his own gray hairs, now within a few months of ninety years old, who is their president; and sits in an armed-chair, some steps higher than the rest of the company, to keep the whole room in order.  A harp plays all the time at the lower end of the room; and every now and then one or other of the company rises and entertains the rest with a song, and (by the by) some are good masters.  Here is nothing drank but ale, and every gentleman hath his separate mug, which he chalks on the table where he sits as it is brought in; and every one retires when he pleases, as from a coffee-house.