Two ragged youths, the one tall, gaunt, clumsy and scrofulous, the other with a wild, careless, beautiful look, evidently indicating Race, are gazing in at the window, not merely at the crowd in the celebrated Club, but at Timothy the waiter, who is removing a plate of that exquisite dish, the muffin (then newly invented), at the desire of some of the revellers within.

“I would, Sam,” said the wild youth to his companion, “that I had some of my mother Macclesfield’s gold, to enable us to eat of those cates and mingle with yon springalds and beaux.”

“To vaunt a knowledge of the stoical philosophy,” said the youth addressed as Sam, “might elicit a smile of incredulity upon the cheek of the parasite of pleasure; but there are moments in life when History fortifies endurance:  and past study renders present deprivation more bearable.  If our pecuniary resources be exiguous, let our resolution, Dick, supply the deficiencies of Fortune.  The muffin we desire to-day would little benefit us to-morrow.  Poor and hungry as we are, are we less happy, Dick, than yon listless voluptuary who banquets on the food which you covet?”

And the two lads turned away up Waterloo Place, and past the “Parthenon” Club-house, and disappeared to take a meal of cow-heel at a neighboring cook’s shop.  Their names were Samuel Johnson and Richard Savage.

Meanwhile the conversation at Button’s was fast and brilliant.  “By Wood’s thirteens, and the divvle go wid ’em,” cried the Church dignitary in the cassock, “is it in blue and goold ye are this morning, Sir Richard, when you ought to be in seebles?”

“Who’s dead, Dean?” said the nobleman, the dean’s companion.

“Faix, mee Lard Bolingbroke, as sure as mee name’s Jonathan Swift—­and I’m not so sure of that neither, for who knows his father’s name?—­there’s been a mighty cruel murther committed entirely.  A child of Dick Steele’s has been barbarously slain, dthrawn, and quarthered, and it’s Joe Addison yondther has done it.  Ye should have killed one of your own, Joe, ye thief of the world.”

“I!” said the amazed and Right Honorable Joseph Addison; “I kill Dick’s child!  I was godfather to the last.”

“And promised a cup and never sent it,” Dick ejaculated.  Joseph looked grave.

“The child I mean is Sir Roger de Coverley, Knight and Baronet.  What made ye kill him, ye savage Mohock?  The whole town is in tears about the good knight; all the ladies at Church this afternoon were in mourning; all the booksellers are wild; and Lintot says not a third of the copies of the Spectator are sold since the death of the brave old gentleman.”  And the Dean of St. Patrick’s pulled out the Spectator newspaper, containing the well-known passage regarding Sir Roger’s death.  “I bought it but now in ‘Wellington Street,’” he said; “the newsboys were howling all down the Strand.”