Adieu.
C.L.
["Hunt." This would, I think, be not Leigh Hunt but his nephew, Hunt of Hunt & Clarke. The diddling I cannot explain. Leishman was the husband of Mrs. Leishman, the Lambs' old landlady at Enfield.
"Miss Wordsworth"—Dorothy Wordsworth, who was ill.
"Perhaps Rogers would smile at this." I take the following passage from the Maclise Portrait Gallery:—
In the early days of the John Bull it was the fashion to lay every foundling witticism at the door of Sam Rogers; and thus the refined poet and man of letters became known as a sorry jester.
John Bull was Theodore Hook's paper. Maginn wrote in Fraser's Magazine:—
Joe Miller vails his bonnet to Sam Rogers; in all the newspapers, not only of the kingdom but its dependencies,—Hindostan, Canada, the West Indies, the Cape, from the tropics,—nay, from the Antipodes to the Orkneys, Sam is godfather— general to all the bad jokes in existence. The Yankees have caught the fancy, and from New Orleans to New York it is the same,—Rogers is synonymous with a pun. All British-born or descended people,—yea the very negro and the Hindoo—father their calembourgs on Rogers. Quashee, or Ramee-Samee, who knows nothing of Sir Isaac Newton, John Milton, or Fraser's Magazine, grins from ear to ear at the name of the illustrious banker, and with gratified voice exclaims, "Him dam funny, dat Sam!">[