s Foote's reply,
"let you alone for making a guinea go further than anybody else."

Churchill's quarrel with Hogarth began at the shilling rubber club,
in the parlour of the Bedford; when Hogarth used some very
insulting language towards Churchill, who resented it in the
_Epistle_. This quarrel showed more venom than wit. "Never," says
Walpole, "did two angry men of their abilities throw mud with less
dexterity."

Woodward, the comedian, mostly lived at the Bedford, was intimate
with Stacie, the landlord, and gave him his (W.'s) portrait, with a
mask in his hand, one of the early pictures by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Stacie played an excellent game at whist. One morning about two
o'clock, one of the waiters awoke him to tell him that a nobleman
had knocked him up, and had desired him to call his master to play
a rubber with him for one hundred guineas. Stacie got up, dressed
himself, won the money, and was in bed and asleep, all within an
hour.

* * * * *

After Macklin had retired from the stage, in 1754, he opened that
portion of the Piazza-houses, in Covent Garden, afterwards known as
the Tavistock Hotel. Here he fitted up a large coffee-room, a
theatre for oratory, and other apartments. To a three-shilling
ordinary he added a shilling lecture, or "School of Oratory and
Criticism;" he presided at the dinner table, and carved for the
company; after which he played a sort of "Oracle of Eloquence."
Fielding has happily sketched him in his "Voyage to Lisbon":
"Unfortunately for the fishmongers of London, the Dory only resides
in the Devonshire seas; for could any of this company only convey
one to the Temple of luxury under the piazza, where Macklin, the
high priest, daily serves up his rich offerings, great would be the
reward of that fishmonger."

In the Lecture, Macklin undertook to make each of his audience an
orator, by teaching him how to speak. He invited hints and
discussions; the novelty of the scheme attracted the curiosity of
numbers; and this curiosity he still further excited by a very
uncommon controversy which now subsisted, either in imagination or
reality, between him and Foote, who abused one another very
openly--"Squire Sammy," having for his purpose engaged the Little
Theatre in the