of our immortal Shakspeare, that, take him for all in all, we shall not
look upon his like again."

The Colonel blushed in his turn, and turning round to his boy with an
arch smile, said, "I learnt it from Incledon. I used to slip out from
Grey Friars to hear him, Heaven bless me, forty years ago; and I used to
be flogged afterwards, and serve me right too. Lord! Lord! how the time
passes!" He drank off his sherry-and-water, and fell back in his chair;
we could see he was thinking about his youth--the golden time--the happy,
the bright, the unforgotten. I was myself nearly two-and-twenty years of
age at that period, and felt as old as, ay, older than the Colonel.

Whilst he was singing his ballad, there had walked, or rather reeled,
into the room, a gentleman in a military frock-coat and duck trousers of
dubious hue, with whose name and person some of my readers are perhaps
already acquainted. In fact it was my friend Captain Costigan, in his
usual condition at this hour of the night.

Holding on by various tables, the Captain had sidled up, without accident
to himself or any of the jugs and glasses round about him, to the table
where we sat, and had taken his place near the writer, his old
acquaintance. He warbled the refrain of the Colonel's song, not
inharmoniously; and saluted its pathetic conclusion with a subdued hiccup
and a plentiful effusion of tears. "Bedad, it is a beautiful song," says
he, "and many a time I heard poor Harry Incledon sing it."

"He's a great character," whispered that unlucky King of Corpus to his
neighbour the Colonel; "was a Captain in the army. We call him the
General. Captain Costigan, will you take something to drink?"