(( 



PUBLICOLA " 22.5 



when, from his highly polished manner, and what I 

 thought to be a cultivated taste, unmarked, as his con- 

 versation was, by any assumed condescension, he seemed 

 to me to develop gifts and attainments of the highest 

 order ; and we parted, as I flattered myself, at a late or 

 rather at an early hour, well j^leased with each other's 

 company. 



But he was not the only great public man I met 

 there. Another, who gloried in the name of " Publicola," 

 I frequently encountered. His manners and his conversa- 

 tion were as unrefined and as brutally ^ j^ointed as were 

 his celebrated articles in the Weekly Dispatch, and his 

 habits appeared to be as loose in their nature as his 

 political creed was false and malignant. His portrait has 

 been well depicted by the author of " Ten Thousand a 

 Year ; " but he must have been a man of considerably 

 more calibre than ever I took him to be, to have attracted 

 the notice of so unbiassed and so discriminating a satirist. 

 His frequent contests with a little chancery barrister — the 

 Constitutional lawyer, as he was there termed — were 

 highly amusing. They were well matched for size as well 

 as volubility ; and one night when he had roused, by his 

 coarse aspersions, the political irascibility of his opponent 

 — not a little sharpened by the potations he had taken — 

 the barrister said, — 



" Stand upon your pins, sir, and defend yourself, or 

 I'll knock you down ! " 



But before my friend Publicola could put himself in 

 attitude, the Constitutional lawyer, not able to keep his 



1 A word of frequent recurrence in his would-be inflammatory- 

 letters. 



VOL. II. Q 



