at fine ladies running away with footmen (which Lady Harriot Wentworth had just done), he ridiculed footmen and maids aping fine ladies and gentlemen. Serjeant Circuit's servants get up a private play, like the quality, which they importance at all. And so the plaintiff's counsel began. "Gentlemen of "the jury, I am in this cause "counsel for Hobson, the plaintiff. "The action is brought against "Nebuchadonezer Nobson, that he "the said Nobson did cut down a "tree, value two-pence, and to his "Own use said tree did convert. "Nobson justifies, and claims tree "as his tree. We will, gentlemen, "first state the probable evidence, "and then come to the positive. And "first as to the probable. When was "this tree here belonging to Hobson, "and claimed by Nobson, cut down? "Was it cut down publicly in the 66 'day, in the face of the sun, men, "women, and children, all the world "looking on? No; it was cut down "privately, in the night, in a dark "night, nobody did see, nobody "could see. 66 Most "ful tree; and not only a useful "tree, but a plum-tree; and not only a plum-tree, but the best of plum'trees, a damsin plum ? assuredly not. If so be, then, that "this be so, and so it most certainly "is, I apprehend no doubt will re"main with the court, but my client "a verdict will have, with full costs "of suit, in such a manner and so "forth, as may nevertheless appear "notwithstanding." To which, with not inferior eloquence, pertinence, and plainness, the counsel for Nobson replies. "Gentlemen of the Jury,-I 66 am in this cause counsel for Nob"son, for Nebuchadonezer Nobson. "I shan't, gentlemen, upon this "occasion, attempt to move your "passions, by flowing periods, and "rhetorical flowers, as Mr. Serjeant "has done. No, gentlemen, if I get 'at your hearts, I will make my way "through your heads, however thick "they may be-in order to which, I "will pursue the learned gentleman 'through what he calls his probable "proofs. And first as to this tree's 'being cut down in the night. In "part we will grant him that point, "but, under favour, not a dark "night, Mr. Serjeant; no, quite the "" Hum. And then with "respect and regard to this tree, I 66 am instructed to say, gentlemen, "it was a beautiful, an ornamental "tree to the spot where it grew. "Now, can it be thought, that any "man would come for to go in the "middle of the night, nobody seeing, "nobody did see, nobody could see, "and cut down a tree, which tree 66 66 was an ornamental tree, if tree had "been his tree? Certainly not. And "again, gentlemen, we moreover "insist, that this tree was not only "ornamental to the spot where it grew, but it was a useful tree to "the owner: it was a plum-tree, "and not only a plum-tree, but I am "authorized to say the best of plum"trees, it was a damsin plum. Now, "can it be thought, that any man "would come for to go, in the middle "of the night, nobody seeing, nobody "did see, nobody could see, and cut "down a tree; which tree was not "only an ornamental tree, but a use reverse, we can prove that the moon shone bright, with uncom'mon lustre that night. So that, if so be, as how people did not see, "that was none of our faults, they might have looked on and seen, if call the Distrustful Mother; and in another form the same subject is continued in the Bankrupt, where Sir James Biddulph's man finds riddles too low a species of writing for him, but confesses he has now and then some dealings with Noble (the then publisher of fashionable novels, whose fixed price was ten pounds for a story in a couple of volumes), and has in hand a genteel comedy of one act which is thought to have a good deal of merit, but the managers have really become such scribblers themselves that they won't give genius fair play. But the hero of the Lame Lover, Sir Luke Limp himself, was its great strength. Here he laughed at Prince Boothby, so called for his love of rank, whose mother, believed to have been Fielding's Sophia Western, was one of his own greatest admirers; and it was here also he put what cheerful face he could on his misfortune, and represented his own. stump as he had represented Faulkner's. We must give the reader, however, a nearer glimpse of Sir Luke. As he enters the scene he fires off such an artillery of jokes on his own infirmity, that the audience, put thoroughly at their ease with his one leg, can but laugh their assent when, pronouncing two to be a sheer redundancy, he asks if they don't think he'd refuse to change with Bill Spindle for one of his drumsticks, or chop with Lord Lumber for both of his logs. That he has carved out a good morning's work for his single limb is certain. He has positively a thousand things to do for half a million of people. He has promised to procure a husband for Lady Cicely Sulky, and to match a coach-horse for Brigadier Whip. After that, he has to run into the city to borrow "its use, we own it was a plum-tree, "indeed, but not of the kind Mr. "Serjeant sets forth, a damsin plum; "our proofs say loudly a bull plum; "but if so be and it had been a "damsin plum, will any man go for "to say, that a damsin plum is the "best kind of plum? not a whit. I take upon me to say, it is not a "noun substantive plum. With plenty "of sugar it does pretty well, indeed, a thousand for young At-all at Almack's; he has to send a Cheshire cheese, by the stage, to Sir Timothy Tankard in Suffolk; and he has to get at the Heralds'-office a coat of arms to clap on the coach of Billy Bengal, a nabob newly arrived. That is the way with Sir Luke. He is one of those eternally busy men who can busy themselves with everything but their own affairs. But now a servant enters and delivers him a card. Sir Luke reads. "Sir "Gregory Goose desires the honour of Sir Luke Limp's company to dine. An answer is desired." Gadso! a little unlucky. He has been engaged this three weeks to Alderman Turtle. But then some one remarks that Sir Gregory is just returned for the corporation of Fleesum. Is he so ? Oh, oh! That alters the case. He sends his compliments to Sir Gregory, and will certainly go and dine there; and he sends his regrets to the Alderman in Threadneedle-street, sorry can't wait upon him, but confined to bed two days with new influenza. Soon after, another servant interrupts Sir Luke with another letter. It is an invitation from the Earl of Brentford. "Taste for music "-Monsieur Duport-fail-dinner upon table at 5." Irresistible this; and accordingly messenger is sent scampering after Sir Gregory's servant to tell him, quite in despair, an engagement recollected that can't in nature be missed. Not that he prefers a lord to a knight. No, there you are mistaken. Oh no; hang it, no: it is not for the title; but to tell you the truth, Brentford has more wit than any man in the world, and it is that makes Sir Luke so fond of his house. At this moment, however, in comes a servant abruptly, running against Sir Luke as he is leaving the stage, and bringing news that a Duke is waiting at the door-his Grace himself, in his own coach-and would be glad of Sir Luke's company to go into the City and take a dinner at Dolly's. What! his own coach with the coronets? There is no possibility of withstanding that. Joe must run at once to Sir Gregory Goose's; no, he is already gone to Alderman Turtle's; well, then, let this man step to the knight's-hey!-no-he must go to my lord's hold, hold, no-Sir Luke has it! Step first to Sir Greg's -then pop in at Lord Brentford's, just as the company are going to dinner-say anything-that Sir Luke's uncle from Epsom-no, that won't do, for he knows nobody cares a farthing for him-hey!" Why tell him," cries Sir Luke, "hold, I have it-tell him, that as I was going "into my chair to obey his commands, I was arrested by "a couple of bailiffs, forced into a hackney coach, and "carried to the Pied Bull in the Borough. I beg ten "thousand pardons for making his Grace wait, but his "Grace knows my misfor-." You hear the sentence indistinctly finished at the street door, for Sir Luke has stumped off, in all haste and without leavetaking, towards the carriage with the coronets. The character was, and we regret to say continues in some abundance to be, fair game for satire; and Foote entered into it with singular relish, and played it inimitably. His own withers were unwrung. He had himself at least nothing of the flunkey among his faults or vices. He had formerly ridiculed dedications to the great by selecting his bookseller for one of the earliest of such offerings; because, apart from good paper and good print, he protested he owed no obligations in connection with his writings to any one in the country, and meant to take good care not to stand in need of patronage. Nor did he at any time afterwards indulge in dedication, except as the frank and manly acknowledgment of kindness done. Less allowable than the satire of the Lame Lover was that of the Maid of Bath in ridicule of the miser Long (Miss Tylney's Mr. Long), and his alleged conduct to Miss Linley. For though Mr. Moore's account of the affair is upon the face of it ridiculous, and it is understood that the reparation made was greatly induced by Foote's exposure, which Garrick would surely not have countenanced by a prologue if he had not known it to have been in no small degree provoked, the subject was of too private a nature for this kind of public handling, and the piece illustrates nothing now so forcibly as the grave mistake its writer too often made in giving such direction to his wit. Nevertheless its local portraiture of Bath, with its residents and visitors, its punch-drinkers, portdrinkers, and claret-clubs, its ancient rakes and sharking dowagers, is as good as the scenes of St. Ronan's Well; and pleasant if wrong is its old, fusty, shabby, shuffling, money-loving, water-drinking, mirth-marring, amorous old hunks of a hero, Solomon Flint, who brings down to marry him (this was a hit at Horne Tooke) a parson who is a prodigious patriot, and a great politician to boot, but whose greater merit to Mr. Flint is that he has left behind him at Paris a choice collection of curious rich clothes which he had promised to sell him a penn'orth. Richard Cumberland and Garrick together visited Foote on the eve of the production of this comedy, walked with him in his garden, heard him read some of its roughlysketched scenes, enjoyed a good dinner with him, to which he had pressed them to stay, and were treated to superlative wine. Foote lived at the time at Parson's Green, where Theodore Hook afterwards lived; but the countryhouse he was most partial to, and occupied for the greater part of his life, was at North End. After the Maid of Bath came the Nabob, and who needs to describe its hero after Mr. Macaulay's description of him, dissolute, ungenerous, tyrannical, ashamed of the humble friends of his youth, hating the aristocracy yet childishly eager to be numbered among them, squandering his wealth on panders and flatterers, tricking out his chairmen with the most costly hot-house flowers, and astounding the ignorant with jargon about rupees, lacs, and jaghires? Nor did this masterly and powerful satire strike more heavily at the baseness which corrupts than at the meanness which is ready to be corrupted. It is Mr. Touchit, a model politician of the borough of Bribe'm, who, when Mr. Mayor complains against the new candidate that where a Nabob settles he raises the prices of provisions for thirty miles round, says he talks like a fool; for, suppose they have mounted beef and mutton a trifle, ain't we obliged to |