enough to form a
good comedy, or at least a farce.

THE SPREAD, OR WINE PARTY AT BRAZEN-NOSE 223

is what Mr. Eglantine calls his _museum of character_, but which I
should call a _regiment of caricatures, take notice_--but I heard him
say, that he had invited them on purpose to surprise you; that he knew
you was fond of eccentricity, and that he thought he had prepared a
great treat. I only wish he may get rid of them as easily as he brought
them there, for if the bull-dogs should gain scent of them there
would be a pretty row, _take notice_." Mark's information, instead of
producing the alarm he evidently anticipated, had completely dispelled
all previous fears, and operated like the prologue to a rich comedy,
from which I expected to derive considerable merriment: following,
therefore, my conductor up one flight of stairs on the opposite side of
the space from which I had entered, I found myself at the closed _oak_
of my friend. "Mr. Eglantine is giving them a _chaunt_" said Mark, who
had applied his ear to the key-hole of the door: "we must wait till the
song is over, or you will be fined in a double bumper of _bishop_, for
interrupting the _stave, take notice_." Curiosity prompted me to
follow Mark's example, when I overheard Horace chanting part of an old
satirical ballad on John Wilkes, to the tune of the Dragon of Wantley;
commencing with--

And ballads I have heard rehearsed By harmonists itinerant, Who modern
worthies celebrate, Yet scarcely make a dinner on't. Some of whom sprang
from noble race, And some were in a pig-sty born, Dependent upon royal
grace Or triple tree of Tyburn.

CHORUS. John Wilkes he was for Middlesex, They chose him knight of the
shire: He made a fool of alderman Bull, And call'd parson Home a liar.

~224~~ The moment silence was obtained, old Mark gave three distinct
knocks at the door, when Horace himself appeared, and we were
immediately admitted to the temple of the Muses; where, seated round a
long table, appeared a variety of characters that would have rivalled
(from description) the Beggars' Club in St. Giles's--the Covent-Garden
Finish--or the once celebrated Peep o' day boys in Fleet-lane. At the
upper end of the table were Tom Echo and Bob Transit, the first smoking
his cigar, the second sketching the portraits of the motley group around
him on the back of his address cards; at the lower end of the room, on
each side of the chair from which Eglantine had just risen to welco