270 



MEMOIE OF JOHN WILSON. 



Captain in your own glorious way, poor Tommy would be fairly 

 dished. As you probably have not the two last numbers of ' Maga' 

 Avith you, I enclose them with ' Captain Rock.' 



"I have not heard from Dr. Maginn yet, which I am quite an- 

 noyed at. He proposed himself that he would send me off regu- 

 larly every Monday a packet under Croker's cover. 



" W. Blackwood." 



The next letter is from Lockhart, and is of varied interest : — 



" 161 Regent Street, Monday, 1824. 

 "Dear Professor: — Many thanks for your welcome epistle, 

 which, on returning from Bristol yesterday, I found here with 

 ' Maga,' and a note of Blackwood's. By the way, you will be glad 

 to hear I found poor Christie doing well, both in health and busi- 

 ness. I spent three very pleasant days with him. I have seen a 

 host of lions, among others, Hook, Canning, Rogers, Croly, Ma- 

 ginn, Captain Morris* (not the Dr.), Botherby, Lady Davy, Lady 

 C. Lamb — * * * * (I copy these stars from a page in Adam J3lair), 

 Miss Baillie, old Gilford, Matthews, Irving, Allan Cunningham, 

 Wilkie, Colburn, and Coleridge. The last well worth all the rest, 

 and 500 more such into the bargain. Ebony should merely keep 

 him in his house for a summer, with Johnny Dowf in a cupboard, 

 and he would drive the windmills before him. I am to dine at Mr. 



* Charles Morris, once the idol of clubmen in London, was born in 1745, and died on July 11, 

 1S33, ninety-three years of age ! Mr. Lockharfs parenthetical reference to the Doctor is, of course, 

 to his own noni de plume as Dr. Peter Morris, of Pensharpe Hall, Aberyswith. The following 

 allusion to the " Captain" is taken from M. Esquiros' English at Home : — 



"Among the last names connected with the Beef-steak Club figures that of Captain Morris. 

 He was born in 1745, but survived most of the merry guests whom he amused by his gayety, his 

 rich imagination, and his poetical follies. He was the sun of the table, and composed some of the 

 most popular English ballads. The Nestor of song, he himself compared his muse to the flying- 

 fish. At the present day his Bacchic straius require the clinking of glass, and the joyous echoes 

 of the Club, of which Captain Morris was poet-laureate. Type of the true Londoner, he pre- 

 ferred town to country, and the shady side of Pall Mall to the most brilliant sunshine illumi- 

 nating nature. Toward the end of his life, however, he let himself be gained over by the charms 

 of the rural life he had ridiculed, and retired to a villa at Brockham given him by the Duke of 

 Norfolk. Before starting, he bade farewell to the Club in verse. He reappeared there as a visitor 

 in 1835, and the members presented him with a large silver bowl bearing an appropriate inscrip- 

 tion. Although at that time eighty-nine years of age, he had lost none of his gayety of heart. 

 He died a short time after, and with him expired the glory of the Club of which he had been 

 one of the last ornaments. Only the name has survived of this celebrated gathering where so 

 much wit was expended, but it was of the sort which evaporates -with the steam of dishes and 

 bowls of punch." 



t An Edinburgh short-hand writer. 



