AT the north end of Cross-court there yet stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving at present for arao a printing-office. This old doorway, if you are young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit entrao Old Drury -- Garricks Drury -- all of it that is left. I never pass it without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon had bee, and the dition of oing (the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease. With what a beati did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught tnosticate the desired cessation! I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to annou.
We went with orders, which my godfather F. had sent us. He kept the oil shop (now Daviess) at the er of Featherstone- building, in Holborn. F. was a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions above his rank. He associated in those days with John Palmer, the edian, whose gait and bearing he seemed to copy; if John (which is quite as likely) did not rather borrow somewhat of his manner from my godfather. He was also known to, and visited by, Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn that young Brinsley brought his first wife on her elopement with him from a b-school at Bath -- the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a quadrille table) when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious charge. -- From either of these exions it may be inferred that my godfather could and an order for the then Drury-laheatre at pleasure -- and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets, in Brinsleys easy autograph, I have heard him say was the sole remuion which he had received for many years nightly illumination of the orchestra and various avenues of that theatre -- and he was tent it should be so. The honour of Sheridans familiarity -- or supposed familiarity -- was better to my godfather than money.
F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen; grandiloquent, yet courteous. His delivery of the o matters of fact was Ciian. He had two Latin words almost stantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin from an oilmans lips!), which my better knowledge since has enabled me to correct. In strict pronunciation they should have been sounded vice versa -- but in those young years they impressed me with more awe than they would now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro -- in his own peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, licized, into something like verse verse. By an imposing manner, and the help of these distorted syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to the highest parochial honours which St. Andrews has to bestow.
He is dead -- and thus much I thought due to his memory, both for my first orders (little wondrous talismans ! -- slight keys, and insignifit to outward sight, but opening to me more than Arabian paradises!) and moreover, that by his testamentary benefice I came into possession of the only landed property which I could ever call my own -- situate he road-way village of pleasant Puckeridge, ifordshire. When I journeyed down to take possession, and planted foot on my own ground, the stately habits of the donor desded upon me, and I strode (shall I fess the vanity?) with larger paces over my allotment of three quarters of an acre, with its odious mansion in the midst, with the feeling of an English freeholder that all bet