In a paper in the _Edinburgh Review_, we find this cabinet picture:--The
club-room is before us, and the table, on which stands the omelet for
Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those heads
which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spectacles
of Burke, and the tall thin form of Langton; the courtly sneer of
Beauclerc, and the beaming smile of Garrick; Gibbon tapping his
snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In the
foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the
figures of those among whom we have been brought up--the gigantic body,
the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of disease; the brown coat,
the black worsted stockings, the grey wig, with the scorched foretop;
the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the
eyes and nose moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form
rolling; we hear it puffing; and then comes the “Why, sir!” and the
“What then, sir?” and the “No, sir!” and the “You don’t see your way
through the question, sir!”