238 NIMROUS NORTHERN TOUR. 



preaching of his reverence so much resembled his braying, that 

 it went to the very core of her heart to hear him." 



We have high classical authority for saying, that one good 

 story is generally followed by another, and we had many such 

 this night. A compliment, however, was paid to one which I 

 told, that was never experienced by me before in fact it elicited 

 three rounds of applause. But the credit is not to me. It was 

 John Warde's celebrated anecdote of the boy whom the quack 

 doctor cured of two of the greatest infirmities of our nature 

 a lying tongue and a short memory by one single pill. 



Of the conversational powers of the Captain, I have already 

 spoken in praise. He amused us greatly this evening with some 

 of his quaint remarks, as also with several anecdotes relating to 

 some of the noted characters in the ring, in days in which he 

 gave it his support. Amongst others, of the celebrated Bill 

 Gibbons. " Did you never see none of Bill Ward's letters, sir?" 

 said he, one day, to the Captain. On the Captain answering in 

 the negative, Gibbons replied, " Then I can only say, you would 

 be surprised at them, for they are all grammer, or thereabouts" 

 He also gave us a specimen of Gibbons's own poetical talent, in 

 some lines on the collar of his dog, but they have escaped from 

 my recollection, which I am sorry for, as they were very charac- 

 teristic of the man, who will himself never be forgotten by those 

 who ever beheld him. 



Having occasion to leave my card with a friend in Gloucester 

 Place, whose door was exactly opposite to that of Professor Wil- 

 son, I thought I could not do less than leave one for him, which 

 I slipped quietly into his servant's hand, having been previously 

 informed that all his Saturdays being devoted to his literary pur- 

 suits, he was invisible to his friends on those days. I was, 

 however, agreeably surprised by being pursued by his footman, 

 with a message from his master, that " he should be happy to 

 see me, if I would walk in." I did walk in, and it is scarcely 

 necessary to say where I found the Professor. I found him in 

 his study, which, as far as an object devoid of life can be assi- 

 milated with a highly-endowed being, was a happy illustration 

 of the person who occupied it. Each was in the extreme of 

 deshabille ; and to bring a nearly obsolete epithet to my aid, 

 there was only one tidy looking thing to be seen in it That was 

 the MSS. (perhaps for the forthcoming Blacfcwootf) which the 

 Professor had that morning been composing, as was evident, 

 from the colour of the ink, and that was without speck or blot, 

 bearing external evidence to the capacity by which it had been 

 produced. 



It is as impossible to be long in the presence of the Professor 



