1830.] The Modern Tantalus ; or, the Demon of Drury-lanc. 557 



stances that must have happened, precisely at the same moment, in dif- 

 ferent places and all within a few minutes after they had occurred. 

 Here was the source of our wonder. His rumours were all just born, 

 fresh from the nursery of time tender, delicate revelations, almost too 

 vapoury, too ethereal to handle. You had his intelligence with the gloss 

 upon it ; although much of it must have travelled some distance. He 

 seemed like the centre, not of gravity, but of society ; and the news 

 naturally fell towards him from all points. There he sate in his snug 

 small box, like an encyclopaedia with a hat on or rather it was as 

 though a newspaper had been compressed into a nut-shell. His ears 

 could never have been the medium through which those multifarious 

 reports had reached him there was not time for them to travel in the 

 ordinary way. Besides, how could he have emissaries in every part of 

 the metropolis to bring him the news every five minutes ? It was impos- 

 sible. Even if notes had been taken in some sublimated system of short- 

 hand, they would have been of no use unless they had been conveyed 

 by a telegraph. There must be some piece of machinery at work that 

 Watt never dreamed of; steam is certainly at the bottom of it. There 

 is some " gathering of the clans" of communication some mental 

 " meeting of the waters," the secret of which is confined to one indivi- 

 dual. It is clear that he knows what is passing in a distant part of the 

 town, the very instant it happens, with more certainty than either of the 

 Siamese twins can guess what the other is thinking about. He should 

 certainly be published with the Gazette. He would prove of incalcu- 

 lable use at elections, as he would know the state of the poll all over the 

 kingdom. The country ought to purchase him. That pernicious system 

 of economy is the vice of every ministry, and is fast bringing the king- 

 dom to destruction. 



It was only by degrees that our friend's astonishing faculty, or inspi- 

 ration, or whatsoever philosophy may decide upon calling it, was deve- 

 loped. He seemed anxious not to stun us, and fired off his succes- 

 sive reports, as if from an air-gun. He sprinkled us very gently at 

 first, to prepare us for the torrent that was to come. This may be a 

 specimen, perhaps, of his beginning a dim, faded sample of his 

 many- coloured address " Good house to-night, Sir very good 

 house, indeed ; beautiful pit, full first price. Garden very indifferent 

 (Heaven has been very good to us !) ; only seventy pounds in the 

 pit, and not more than half that in the gallery j boxes far from bril- 

 liant. Droll circumstance occurred just now in the ' Critic ;' both 

 morning-guns missed fire, and Farley was obliged to imitate them as 

 well as he could from the wing and the best of the joke is, that the 

 audience never found out the difference. Capital house at the Adelphi. 

 Surrey doing very well to-night. Rather flat at Tottenham- street. Du- 

 crow slipped, and his neck narrowly escaped dislocation : no man should 

 ride more than a dozen horses at one time." All this, and much more 

 to the same effect although it was early in the evening to have derived 

 information from such various quarters did not excite our especial sur- 

 prise. We conjectured that he had heard it accidentally, and in the 

 way of business. But on succeeding evenings, when he entered into 

 detail, and described matters more minutely when he repeated the 

 grand joke, the lion of the new farce, at one house, and hummed part of 

 a chorus in the new opera at another ; when he told us what airs Miss 

 Paton had introduced how Fanny Kemble had shrieked, and how 



