270 CONVIVIAL KEMINISCENCES. 



in something like a gallopade movement. We wended our weary way 

 to the CoAL-HoLK. The Coat-Hole, what a magic is in the very name f 

 what an association of ideas crowd upon the mind at the bare mention of 

 a spot consecrated to mirth and good-fellowship, and where once was to 

 be met with, in their gayest moments — and we shall not do those classip 

 regions the injustice to say that even yet, althpugh "like angels' visits, 

 few and far between," they may not be found — some of the choicest 

 master spirits of the age. Alas ! how often " at the wee hour ayont the 

 twelve," 1 ave we met poor Kean there, " his eye in a fine phrenzy 

 roUijig," as he sat in his box surrounded by a bevy of tipsy half-pay offi- 

 cers, attorney's clerks, newspaper reporters, and jovial sons of Thespian. 

 We never shall forget one night we spent there in the company of Kean. 

 It was at one of the Friday dinners, at which the veteran proprietor of 

 the Coal-Hole used, like a Patriarch, to take the chair — and never was a 

 chair — no not even by Manners Sutton, better filled. The bottle and the 

 song had passed round freely, until night had gi-own into grey morn, 

 when a rather angjy disputation arose between Kean and a bacchanalian 

 linen-draper, upon the merits of dramatic representation. From high 

 words the aflfair came to blows. It was a regular stand-up fight. Kean, 

 I recollect, was handed by old Pierce Egan, and the linen-draper by a 

 " learned Theban," who at that time was, and I believe is still, a para- 

 graph-monger to a morning paper, as well as contributor to an Evangeli- 

 cal Magazine. After two or three smart skirmishes, for they were no- 

 thing else, the belligerents were separated, but not until one of the linen- 

 draper's eyes was completely, to use a pugilistic expression, "bunged up," 

 which was nearly all the damage that occurred in the "set-to," and Kean 

 and myself immediately left the Coal-Hole. When we got into the 

 Strand, he was in a perfect phrenzy, and every now-and-then, a3 

 his excited feelings magnified the affront he had lately received, it 

 was not without considerable difficulty that I succeeded in preventing 

 him from returning to the Coal-Hole, for the purpose of annihilating the 

 ill-fated tradesman who had provoked his wrath. As we journeyed 

 along, he became much calmer, and fell into a deep meditative mood, 

 from which I was only able to arouse him, by pointing to him that 

 morn had already begun to dawn. " And so it has !" he exclaimed, 

 clasping his hands, and assuming a theatrical gesture ; and then, with 

 inimitacle pathos, he continued, " lovely morning ! how delightful thou 

 art to the virtuous and industrious — thou glancest through the lattice 

 of the humble, but hardy, swain — and, lo ! with jocund spirits and 

 strong-strung nerves, he starts from his couch, again to pursue his daily 

 toil — how different is thy appearance to the enervated and broken- 

 down debauchee, who has spent a sleepless night — his body racked with 

 pain, and his mind tern with anguish, at the recollection of health, 

 fame, and fortune sacrificed at the shrine of intemperance and dissipa- 

 tion." A change had now come over the spirit of his dream, and the 

 tears chased each other down his pallid cheeks. It would be beside 

 my business now to conclude Kean's homily, or to enter more largely 

 into my reminiscences of him — but suffice it to say that be dehvered a 

 discourse full of more christian and moral excellences than I ever 

 before heard, even from the lips of Philpots himself. But I must return to 

 pigs, as The Chronicle has it. It is said, by some, that the Coal-Hole 



