It was still, however, the custom at that period to call on the name of some fair maiden, and sing her praises over the cup as it passed.  It was a point of honour for all the company to join the health.  Some beauties became celebrated for the number of their toasts; some even standing toasts among certain sets.  In the Kit-kat Club the custom was carried out by rule, and every member was compelled to name a beauty, whose claims to the honour were then discussed, and if her name was approved, a separate bowl was consecrated to her, and verses to her honour engraved on it.  Some of the most celebrated toasts had even their portraits hung in the club-room, and it was no slight distinction to be the favourite of the Kit-kat.  When only eight years old, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu enjoyed this privilege.  Her father, the Lord Dorchester, afterwards Evelyn, Duke of Kingston, in a fit of caprice, proposed ’the pretty little child’ as his toast.  The other members, who had never seen her, objected; the Peer sent for her, and there could no longer be any question.  The forward little girl was handed from knee to knee, petted, probably, by Addison, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Garth, and many another famous wit.  Another celebrated toast of the Kit-kat, mentioned by Walpole, was Lady Molyneux, who, he says, died smoking a pipe.

This club was no less celebrated for its portraits than for the ladies it honoured.  They, the portraits, were all painted by Kneller, and all of one size, which thence got the name of Kit-kat; they were hung round the club-room.  Jacob Tonson, the publisher, was secretary to the club.

Defoe tells us the Kit-kat held the first rank among the clubs of the early part of the last century, and certainly the names of its members comprise as many wits as we could expect to find collected in one society.

Addison must have been past forty when he became a member of the Kit-kat.  His ‘Cato’ had won him the general applause of the Whig party, who could not allow so fine a writer to slip from among them.  He had long, too, played the courtier, and was ‘quite a gentleman.’  A place among the exclusives of the Kit-kat was only the just reward of such attainments, and he had it.  I shall not be asked to give a notice of a man so universally known, and one who ranks rather with the humorists than the wits.  It will suffice to say, that it was not till after the publication of the ‘Spectator,’ and some time after, that he joined our society.

Congreve I have chosen out of this set for a separate life, for this man happens to present a very average sample of all their peculiarities.  Congreve was a literary man, a poet, a wit, a beau, and—­what unhappily is quite as much to the purpose—­a profligate.  The only point he, therefore, wanted in common with most of the members, was a title; but few of the titled members combined as many good and bad qualities of the Kit-kat kind as did William Congreve.