ody. He shuffled
sidelong to the nearest chair, sat down on the extreme corner of it,
dropped his hat on the floor, buried his chin in his stock, vented his
usual pet phrase on such occasions, 'It's a fine day,' and resigned
himself moodily to social misery. If the talk did not suit him, he bore
it a certain time, silent, self-absorbed, as a man condemned to death,
then suddenly, with a brusque 'Well, good morning,' shuffled to the door
and blundered his way out, audibly cursing himself for his folly in
voluntarily making himself the laughing-stock of an idiot's critical
servants. It must have been hard to bear with such a man, whatever might
be his talent; and yet his dying words were, 'I've led a happy life.'"

That delightful humorist, Lamb, lived in Southampton Buildings, in 1800,
coming from Pentonville, and moving to Mitre Court Buildings, Fleet
Street. Here, then, must have taken place some of those enjoyable
evenings which have been so pleasantly sketched by Hazlitt, one of the
most favoured of Lamb's guests:--

"At Lamb's we used to have lively skirmishes, at the Thursday evening
parties. I doubt whether the small-coal man's musical parties could
exceed them. Oh, for the pen of John Buncle to consecrate a _petit
souvenir_ to their memory! There was Lamb himself, the most delightful,
the most provoking, the most witty, and the most sensible of men. He
always made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the
evening. His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is the
best. No one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent
things, in half-a-dozen sentences, as he does. His jests scald like
tears, and he probes a question with a play upon words. What a
keen-laughing, hair-brained vein of home-felt truth! What choice venom!
How often did we cut into the haunch of letters! how we skimmed the
cream of criticism! How we picked out the marrow of authors! Need I go
over the names? They were but the old, everlasting set--Milton and
Shakespeare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and Addison, Swift and Gay,
Fielding, Smollet, Sterne, Richardson, Hogarth's prints, Claude's
landscapes, the Cartoons at Hampton Court, and all those things that,
having once been, must ever be. The Scotch novels had not then been
heard of, so we said nothing about them. In general we were hard upon
the moderns. The author of the _Rambler_ was only tolerated in Boswell's
life of him; and it was as much as anyone could do to edge