ar walks of life,
would hob-nob together, and where the sharp concussions of their
diamond-cut-diamond wit would emit the sparks and flashes that were
remembered and straightway converted into "copy." In those early days
the flow of soul was closely regulated by the flow of liquor, and the
most modest of Dinners was food at once to body and to mind. "What
things," wrote Beaumont in his Letter to Ben Jonson--

"What things have we seen
Done at the 'Mermaid'! Heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtile flame,
As if that every one from whom they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life."

As in Elizabethan times, so in the days of Victoria. The _Punch_
Dinners of the last few decades would, in their excellence and
refinement, have astonished the merry crew of old; but the entertainment
is now but the prelude to business, and not, as in the earlier
struggling months, the powder that served to fire off the great guns of
humour. The weekly Dinner was evolved from the gatherings that were held
nearly every evening, as well as Saturday-nightly, in the anxious days
that preceded--and immediately succeeded, too--the laboured birth of
_Punch_. The first of these--the very first "_Punch_ Dinner," strictly
so-called--was held at "La Belle Sauvage," Ludgate Hill, on the spot now
occupied by the publishing firm of Cassell and Company. Hine was one of
those present at this historic feast, having been already impressed by
Landells into the service of the paper. I may add, as a matter of minor
history, that Mr. Price, the owner of the hostelry, advertised his house
in the early numbers of _Punch_: a fact which suggests (perhaps
unjustly) a mysterious financial understanding on the score of his
bill--especially as Mr. Price was a brother-in-law of Bradbury the
First. These tavern repasts were soon divided up between those who
wished to work and those who wished to play; and the _Punch_ Dinner and
the "_Punch_ Club" were in due course established as separate
institutions. For all that, the meetings of both were held in the "Crown
Inn" in Vinegar Yard, just off Drury Lane, and the "Club" was not
long after (1843) celebrated in the pages of _Punch_ itself by
the "Professor," Percival Leigh, in his choicest dog-Latin--his most
elegant _latin de cuisine_--or, as he himself called it,
"Anglo-Graeco-Canino-Latinum." The lines, a parody of G