s
designs. He might often be seen at the "Craven's Head," in Drury Lane,
kept by a host known to his patrons by the familiar title of "Billy
Oxberry"; at the Saturday night harmonic meetings held at the "Kean's
Head," in Russell Court, Drury Lane; at "The Wrekin," in Broad Court,
Long Acre, at that time frequented by gentlemen of the Press; at "The
Harp," in Russell Street, Drury Lane, a well known house of call for
actors, and appropriately immortalised in one of his illustrations to
"The Life of an Actor"; at the "Cider Cellar"; at the "Fives Court"; at
the numerous "Masquerades" of the day; at any place of resort, in fact,
which offered studies of life and character or subjects of social
satire. He figures in his own sketch of _The Masquerade at the Argyll
Rooms_, where we recognise him (in one of the right hand boxes) in a
white sheet, a tall paper cap on his head, and a staff in his hand. His
impersonations were sometimes singularly original. At one of these
"masquerades," for instance, he represented a "frozen-out gardener"
soliciting charity, and holding in his hand a cabbage covered with
icicles; at another, he appeared as a hospital "out-patient," wearing a
hideous mask (designed by himself) representing some dreadful disease,
from which the bystanders recoiled in horror and amazement. With all
this drollery Lane kept himself well out of mischief, and was moreover,
in days when young and old were more or less inclined to be topers, a
strictly temperate man.

But Lane's talents were not confined to comic etching or designs on
wood. He was also an artist in oil and water colour. He painted in oils
_The Drunken Gardener_; _The Organ of Murder_, a clumsy, nervous
craniologist feeling his own head in doubt and perplexity to ascertain
whether the dreadful "organ" is developed in himself; _An Hour before
the Duel_ (exhibited at the Institution in Pall Mall). Other subjects of
his pictures were: _The Poet reading his Manuscript Play of Five Acts to
a Friend_; _Too many Cooks Spoil the Broth_; _The Nightmare_; _The
Mathematician's Abstraction_ (the latter purchased by Lord Northwick).
His most ambitious work in oils (upwards of seventeen feet in length)
was called _A Trip to Ascot Races_. His last work, _The Enthusiast_ (the
first we have mentioned), was exhibited at Somerset House at the time of
his death.

The fate of this clever young artist and satirist was both singular and
tragical. It appears that on the 21st o