312 George Caiman' Random Records. [MARCH, 



Here songsters squall, fat waltzers there advance, 



To crush our toes with what they call a dance. 



A dance, at which a well-taught bear would blush, 



Till supper is announced, and then a rush ; 



The masks pour in impatient all to stuff . 



Rolls stale, ham rank, pies mouldy, chickens tough, 



Cold punch grown warm, dead porter, wine half rum, 



And waiters ' coming/ who will never come. 



The scramble o'er, the revel rises high, 



With debauchees and dollies in full cry. 



Till all in blazing sunshine reel away, 



With fevered headaches to doze out the day." 



In a visit to Oxford he makes some mention of the " Connoiseur." a 

 paper started in 1754, by his father, when he was but an under graduate, 

 and at the gay age of twenty- two. Bonnel Thornton was his coadjutor. 

 Thornton was a man of some ability, some pleasantry, and with a grow- 

 ing propensity to get drunk, which soon completed his literary career. 

 Thornton, as might be expected, generally shrank from his share of the 

 task, and Colman was driven to double labour. " When the onus fell 

 upon Thornton, he waddled out, like a lame duck in the alley, that is, he 

 was delinquent, and his partner was left to supply the deficiency. On one 

 of those occasions the joint authors met, in hurry and irritation, to extri- 

 cate themselves from the dilemma my father enraged or sulky- 

 Thornton muzzy with liquor the essay to be published next morning 

 not a word of it written not even a subject thought on, and the press 

 waiting ; nothing to be done, but to scribble helter skelter. ' Sit down, 

 Colman/ said Thornton, ' we must give the blockheads something/ 

 My industrious sire, conscious of obligations to be fulfilled, sat down 

 immediately, writing whatever came into his head. Thornton, in the 

 mean time, walked up and down, taking huge pinches of snuff, seeming 

 to ruminate, but not contributing one word. When my father had 

 thrown upon paper about one half of a moral essay, Thornton, who was 

 still pacing the room, with a glass of brandy and water in his hand, 

 stuttered out, f Write away, Colman, you are a bold fellow ; you can 

 tell them that virtue is a fine thing/ implying that my father wrote 

 nothing but common places. Thornton's worthless life had the natural 

 termination. He was seized with dropsy, and died, talking in a style 

 which it is only mercy to suppose was the language of insanity or in- 

 toxication. " His relations surrounding his death-bed, he told them that 

 he should expire before he counted twenty; and covering his head 

 with the bed-clothes, he began to count one, two - eighteen, nine- 

 teen, twenty. He then thrust out his head, and exclaimed, e It's very 

 strange, but why ar'n't you all crying ? Teach my son, when I am gone, 

 his ABC. I know mine in several languages. But I perceive no 

 good that the knowledge has ever done me so if you never teach him 

 his A B C at all, it doesn't much signify/ Within an hour after this 

 he died." 



From Oxford George we went to see the wonders of the Peak; where he 

 set fire to the straw on which he lay in the boat that carried him through 

 the cavern : an accident which reminds him of the good luck of a 

 military officer, who could boast of having been nearly burnt to death, 

 hanged and drowned in the course of five minutes. This happy person, 

 who contrived to crowd so much adventure into so short a time, was on 

 board a transport with his regiment. " They fell in with an enemy's 



