“I dare say you think there’s little wit
       In this, but you’ve all forgot
     That, instead of being a jeu d’esprit,
       ’Tis only a jeu de mot,”

pronouncing the French words as broadly as possible, “a Jew d’esprit, and ’tis only a Jew de motte,” for the sake of the rhyme, and his subject, the Jews.  It certainly was all through a capital specimen of ready humor.  I remember on another occasion hearing him exercise his singular gift in a manner that seemed to me as unjustifiable as it was disagreeable.  I met him at dinner at Sir John McDonald’s, then adjutant-general, a very kind and excellent friend of mine.  Mrs. Norton and Lord C——­, who were among the guests, both came late, and after we had gone into the dining-room, where they were received with a discreet quantity of mild chaff, Mrs. Norton being much too formidable an adversary to be challenged lightly.  After dinner, however, when the men came up into the drawing-room, Theodore Hook was requested to extemporize, and having sung one song, was about to leave the piano in the midst of the general entreaty that he would not do so, when Mrs. Norton, seating herself close to the instrument so that he could not leave it, said, in her most peculiar, deep, soft, contralto voice, which was like her beautiful dark face set to music, “I am going to sit down here, and you shall not come away, for I will keep you in like an iron crow.”  There was nothing about her manner or look that could suggest any thing but a flattering desire to enjoy Hook’s remarkable talent in some further specimen of his power of extemporizing, and therefore I suppose there must have been some previous ill-will or heart-burning on his part toward her—­she was reckless enough in her use of her wonderful wit and power of saying the most intolerable stinging things, to have left a smart on some occasion in Hook’s memory, for which he certainly did his best to pay her then.  Every verse of the song he now sang ended with his turning with a bow to her, and the words, “my charming iron crow;” but it was from beginning to end a covert satire of her and her social triumphs; even the late arrival at dinner and its supposed causes were duly brought in, still with the same mock-respectful inclination to his “charming iron crow.”  Everybody was glad when the song was over, and applauded it quite as much from a sense of relief as from admiration of its extraordinary cleverness; and Mrs. Norton smilingly thanked Hook, and this time made way for him to leave the piano.

We lived near each other at this time, we in James Street, Buckingham Gate, and the Nortons at Storey’s Gate, at the opposite end of the Birdcage Walk.  We both of us frequented the same place of worship—­a tiny chapel wedged in among the buildings at the back of Downing Street, the entrance to which was from the park; it has been improved away by the new government offices.  Our dinner at the McDonalds’ was on a Saturday, and the next day, as we were walking