his first wife on her elopement with him from a boarding-school at
Bath--the beautiful Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a
quadrille table) when he arrived in the evening with his harmonious
charge.--From either of these connexions it may be inferred that
my godfather could command an order for the then Drury-lane
theatre at pleasure--and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those
cheap billets, in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say
was the sole remuneration which he had received for many years'
nightly illumination of the orchestra and various avenues of that
theatre--and he was content it should be so. The honour of Sheridan's
familiarity--or supposed familiarity--was better to my godfather than
money.

F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen; grandiloquent, yet courteous.
His delivery of the commonest matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had
two Latin words almost constantly in his mouth (how odd sounds Latin
from an oilman's lips!), which my better knowledge since has enabled
me to correct. In strict pronunciation they should have been sounded
_vice versâ_--but in those young years they impressed me with more awe
than they would now do, read aright from Seneca or Varro--in his own
peculiar pronunciation, monosyllabically elaborated, or Anglicized,
into something like _verse verse_. By an imposing manner, and the help
of these distorted syllables, he climbed (but that was little) to the
highest parochial honours which St. Andrew's has to bestow.

He is dead--and thus much I thought due to his memory, both for
my first orders (little wondrous talismans!--slight keys, and
insignificant to outward sight, but opening to me more than Arabian
paradises!) and moreover, that by his testamentary beneficence I came
into possession of the only landed property which I could ever call