my s---- l,
what's here to do!' These were the meditations of this agreeable
youth. From one of these reveries he started up one night, when I
was there, called a Mr. Bagnell out of the room, and most
heroically stabbed him in the dark, the other having no weapon to
defend himself with. In this career, the Tiger persisted, till at
length a Mr. Lennard brandished a whip over his head, and stood in
a menacing attitude, commanding him to ask pardon directly. The
Tiger shrank from the danger, and with a faint voice
pronounced--'Hut! what signifies it between you and me? Well! well!
I ask your pardon.' 'Speak louder, Sir; I don't hear a word you
say.' And indeed he was so very tall, that it seemed as if the
sound, sent feebly from below, could not ascend to such a height.
This is the hero who is to figure at Brentford."

* * * * *

Foote's favourite coffee-house was the Bedford. He was also a
constant frequenter of Tom's, and took a lead in the Club held
there, and already described.

Dr. Barrowby, the well-known newsmonger of the Bedford, and the
satirical critic of the day, has left this whole-length sketch of
Foote:

"One evening (he says) he saw a young man extravagantly dressed out
in a frock suit of green and silver lace, bag-wig, sword, bouquet,
and point ruffles, enter the room (at the Bedford), and immediately
join the critical circle at the upper end. Nobody recognized him;
but such was the ease of his bearing, and the point of humor and
remark with which he at once took up the conversation, that his
presence seemed to disconcert no one, and a sort of pleased buzz of
'who is he?' was still going round the room unanswered, when a
handsome carriage stopped at the door; he rose, and quitted the
room, and the servants announced that his name was Foote, and that
he was a young gentleman of family and fortune, a student of the
Inner Temple, and that the carriage had called for him on its way
to the assembly of a lady of fashion". Dr. Barrowby once turned the
laugh against Foote at the Bedford, when he was ostentatiously
showing his gold repeater, with the remark--'Why, my watch does not
go!' 'It soon _will go_,' quietly remarked the Doctor. Young
Collins, the poet, who came to town in 1744 to seek his fo