Christened in a tea-pot,
And dead in an hour.'

Aetat four, life is dear, and the idea of that early demise was far from
welcome to me. I privily agreed that I would _not_ be a butterfly. But
there was no end to the history of this very inconstant insect in our
nursery lore. We didn't care a drop of honey for Dr. Watts's 'Busy Bee;'
we infinitely preferred the account--not in the 'Morning Post'--of the
'Butterfly's Ball' and the 'Grasshopper's Feast; and few, perhaps, have
ever given children more pleasures of imagination than William Roscoe,
its author. There were some amongst us, however, who were already being
weaned to a knowledge of life's mysterious changes, and we sought the
third volume of the romance of the flitting gaudy thing in a little poem
called 'The Butterfly's Funeral.'

Little dreamed we, when in our prettly little song-books we saw the
initial 'B.' at the bottom of these verses, that a real human butterfly
had written them, and that they conveyed a solemn prognostication of a
fate that was _not_ his. Little we dreamed, as we lisped out the verses,
that the 'gentleman who roamed in a' not velvet but 'plum-coloured
suit,' according to Lady Hester Stanhope, was the illustrious George
Brummell, The Beau wrote these trashy little rhymes--pretty in their
way--and, since I was once a child, and learnt them off by heart, I will
not cast a stone at them. Brummell indulged in such trifling poetizing,
but never went further. It is a pity he did not write his memoirs; they
would have added a valuable page to the history of 'Vanity Fair.'

Brummell's London glory lasted from 1798 to 1816. His chief club was
Watier's. It was a superb assemblage of gamesters and fops--knaves and
fools; and it is difficult to say which, element predominated. For a