Sit qui dicta foras eliminet.”[[1]]
[1].
Let none beyond this threshold bear away
What friend to friend in confidence may say.
“Jerdan,” he said, “you understand those words?”
“I understand one,” said Jerdan, looking sharply round—“sit; and I mean to do it.”
Authors, and dramatic authors in particular, were mercilessly chaffed when they dined with the Sublime Society. Cobb, whose farce “The First-Floor” achieved great popularity, used to accept the satire and raillery of members with great good-humour, generally silencing them one by one. Storace composed some of his finest music for Cobb’s comic operas, “The Haunted Tower” and “The Siege of Belgrade,” which achieved success. An Indian opera, “Ramah Drûg,” did not. Cobb was much chaffed about these operas, especially about the first-named.
“Why ever,” one night said Arnold, “did you call your opera by such a name? There was no spirit in it from beginning to end!” “Anyhow,” exclaimed another inveterate punster, “‘Ramah Drûg’ was the most appropriate title possible, for it was literally ramming a drug down the public throat.” “True,” rejoined Cobb; “but it was a drug that evinced considerable power, for it operated on the public twenty nights in succession.” “My good friend,” said Arnold triumphantly, “that was a proof of its weakness, if it took so long in working.” “You are right, Arnold, in that respect,” retorted Cobb. “Your play” (Arnold had brought out a play, which did not survive the first night) “had the advantage of mine, for it was so powerful a drug as to be thrown up as soon as it was taken!”
The first and last Saturdays of the season, and the Saturday in Easter week, were “private.”
On these days no visitors were invited. The accounts were gone into, and the amount of the “whip” to regulate the past or accruing expenses decided, the qualifications of such candidates as were anxious, on the occasion of a vacancy, to join the society discussed, and other matters connected with its well-being debated.