"Round Table," with its discussions, plans, and piles of proofs, to a quiet corner in The Cock. And then he loved a good dinner:

"I am a diner-out, and live in London," he writes in one of "Mr. Brown's" letters. "I protest, as I look back at the men and dinners I have seen in the last week, my mind is filled with manly respect and pleasure. How good they have been! how admirable the entertainments! how worthy the men!

"Let me, without divulging names, and with a cordial gratitude, mention a few of those whom I have met and who have all done their duty.

"Sir, I have sat at table with a great, a world-renowned statesman. I watched him during the progress of the banquet I am at liberty to say that he enjoyed it like a man. "On another day it was a celebrated literary character. It was beautiful to see him at his dinner: cordial and generous, jovial and kindly, the great author enjoyed himself as the great statesman may he long give us good

books and good dinners!

"Yet another day, and I sat opposite to a Right Reverend Bishop. My lord, I was pleased to see good thing after good thing disappear before you, and think no man ever better became that rounded episcopal apron. How amiable he was; how kind! He put water into his wine. Let us respect the moderation of the Church.

"And then the men learned in the law: How they dine! what hospitality, what splendour, what comfort, what wine! As we walked away very gently in the moonlight, only three days since, from the 's, a friend of my

youth and myself, we could hardly speak for gratitude: 'Dear sir,' we breathed fervently, 'ask us soon again.' One never has too much at those perfect banquets - no hideous headaches ensue, or horrid resolutions about adopting Revalenta Arabica for the future - but contentment with all the world, light slumbers, joyful waking to grapple with the morrow's work. Ah, dear Bob, those lawyers have great merits. There is a dear old judge at whose family table if I could see you seated, my desire in life would be pretty nearly fulfilled. If you make yourself agreeable there, you will be in a fair way to get on in the world. But you are a youth still. Youths go to balls: men go to dinners."

Often when he was supposed to be dining at these tables of the great, he was tucked away in some quaint tavern.

"Instead of dancing at Almack's," writes Walter Besant, in his "Fifty Years Ago," "he was taking his chop and stout at The Cock; instead of gambling at Crockford's, he was writing 'copy' for any paper which would take it.'

And it was all he could afford had his friends but known it in those early days when "all that he wrote was not taken, and all that was taken was not approved"— when even "The Great Hoggarty Diamond" was so little thought of at Fraser's, that he had been called upon to shorten it. "An incident," says Trollope, "disagreeable in its nature to any literary gentleman, and likely to be specially so when he knows that his provision of bread, certainly of improved bread and butter, is at stake."

It was his table at The Cock that I had come to see on this Saturday afternoon - the only afternoon in the week

when the room would be free of guests, every shop being cleared of customers at midday in modern London Town.

Henry, the old head waiter who had been moved across in 1887 with the fireplace and fittings, shook his head in answer to my inquiry as to the traditions connecting the great author with any special tables in the place. And so did the flat-nosed boy who sowed the seed of a fresh crop of sawdust from a tin pan, and who later on brought up an assortment of bread and cheese cut into little dominoes, which he scattered over the sawdust "to pizen de rats over Sunday," he explained. And so did the proprietor, who produced a big book filled with the signatures of many celebrities the world over, who had eaten "a double" and had their pewters refilled. But careful scrutinizing failed to find any record of Mr. Thackeray's name among the T's. Neither had he any record of Pendennis or Warrington, who had their quarters in Lamb Court in the Middle Temple, but five minutes away.

But I had already made up my mind. Thackeray's table would be hidden away in some corner, out of reach of the man who came in late, joggling the table as he squeezed past. It would be near a window, where the light would come in over his left shoulder- a necessity with most authors. It would, too, be near, and yet far enough away from the fire so that its blaze would cheer and yet not scorch; and so, after scanning the long narrow room, I placed him at the table on the left of my sketch -the one

on this side of the grate. Here, he would have no opposite neighbour, there being only room for one, and here, too, his repast eaten and the room empty, he might, as was his