Sir John was an intelligent man; Windham used to say of him that he was very near being a clever man. He was a sort of busy idler; and his ruling passion was that of visiting remarkable criminals in prison, and obtaining their histories from their own lips. A murder had been committed, by one Patch, upon a Mr. Bligh, at Deptford; the evidence was circumstantial, but the inference of his guilt was almost irresistible; still many well-disposed persons doubted the man's guilt, and amongst them was Sir John, who thought the anxiety could only be relieved by Patch's confession. For this end, Sir John importuned the poor wretch incessantly, but in vain. Patch persisted in asserting his innocence, till, wearied with Hippisley's applications, he assured the Baronet that he would reveal to him, on the scaffold, all that he knew of Mr. Bligh's death. Flattered with being made the depository of this mysterious communication, Sir John mounted the scaffold with Patch, and was seen for some minutes in close conference with him. It happened that a simple old woman from the country was in the crowd at the execution. Her eyes, intent upon the awful scene, were fixed, by an accidental misdirection, upon Sir John, whom she mistook for the person who was about to be executed; and not waiting till the criminal was actually turned off, she went away with the wrong impression; the peculiar face, and above all, the peculiar nose (a most miraculous organ), of Hippisley, being indelibly impressed upon her memory. Not many days after, the old lady met Sir John in Cheapside; the certainty that he was Patch, seized her so forcibly that she screamed out to the passing crowd, "It's Patch, it's Patch; I saw him hanged; Heaven deliver me!"—and then fainted. When this incident was first related at the Steaks, a mock inquest was set on foot, to decide whether Sir John was Patch or not, and unanimously decided in the affirmative.

Cobb, Secretary of the East India Company, was another choice spirit at the Steaks: once, when he filled the vice-chair, he so worried the poor president, an Alderman, that he exclaimed, "Would to Heaven, I had another vice-president, so that I had a gentleman opposite to me!"—"Why should you wish any such thing?" rejoined Cobb; "you cannot be more opposite to a gentleman than you are at present."

After the fire at Covent Garden, the Sublime Society were re-established at the Bedford, where they met until Mr. Arnold had fitted up apartments for their reception in the English Opera House. The Steaks continued to meet here until the destruction of the Theatre by fire, in 1830; after which they returned to the Bedford; and, upon the re-building of the Lyceum Theatre, a dining-room was again provided for them. "The room they dine in," says Mr. Cunningham, "a little Escurial in itself, is most appropriately fitted up—the doors, wainscoting, and roof, of good old English oak, ornamented with gridirons as thick as Henry the Seventh's Chapel with the portcullis of the founder. Everything assumes the shape, or is distinguished by the representation, of their emblematic implement, the gridiron. The cook is seen at his office through the bars of a spacious gridiron, and the original gridiron of the Society, (the survivor of two terrific fires) holds a conspicuous position in the centre of the ceiling. Every member has the power of inviting a friend." The portraits of several worthies of the Sublime Society were painted: one brother "hangs in chain," as Arnold remarked in alluding to the civic chain in which he is represented; it was in allusion to the toga in which he is painted, that Brougham, being asked whether he thought it a likeness, remarked that it could not fail of being like him, "there was so much of the fur (thief) about it."

The author of the Clubs of London, who was a member of the Sublime Society, describes a right in favouring them, "a brotherhood, a sentiment of equality. How you would laugh to see the junior member emerging from the cellar, with half-a-dozen bottles in a basket! I have seen Brougham employed in this honourable diplomacy, and executing it with the correctness of a butler. The Duke of Leinster, in his turn, took the same duty.

"With regard to Brougham, at first sight you would not set him down as having a natural and prompt alacrity for the style of humour that prevails amongst us. But Brougham is an excellent member, and is a remarkable instance of the peculiar influences of this peculiar Society on the human character. We took him just as the schools of philosophy, the bar, the senate, had made him. Literary, forensic, and parliamentary habits are most intractable materials, you will say, to make a member of the Steaks, yet no man has imbibed more of its spirit, and he enters its occasional gladiatorship with the greatest glee."

Admirable were the offhand puns and passes, which, though of a legal character, were played off by Bolland, another member of the Society. Brougham was putting hypothetically the case of a man convicted of felony, and duly hanged according to law; but restored to life by medical appliances; and asked what would be the man's defence if again brought to trial. "Why," returned Bolland, "it would be for him to plead a cord and satisfaction." ["Accord and satisfaction" is a common plea in legal practice.] The same evening were talked over Dean Swift's ingenious but grotesque puns upon the names of antiquity, such as Ajax, Archimedes, and others equally well known. Bolland remarked that when Swift was looking out for those humorous quibbles, it was singular that it should never have occurred to him that among the shades that accost Æneas in the sixth book of the Æneid, there was a Scotchman of the name of Hugh Forbes. Those who had read Virgil began to stare. "It is quite plain," said Bolland: "the ghost exclaims, 'Olim Euphorbus eram.'"

The following are the first twenty-four names of the Club, copied from their book:—[13]

The following were subsequent members:—