to partake of the refreshing delight created by his versatile and unrivalled talent. Indeed, it will not be requisite to tax ingenuity very greatly to think of an infinite variety of ways by which a large fortune may be made. It has for years past produced from
Three to Five Thousand Pounds a Year,
And this without any artificial aid, or so much of industry and tact as
this wonderful building seems especially to have invited.
Robins’s eloquence very often led him to describe things as they were not, and now and again he had to recant and make amends. He is generally credited with having referred to a gallows which stood upon part of an estate, as a unique and elegant hanging wood, and thereby obtaining a considerably larger sum for the property than it was in any way worth. Among Robins’s many eccentricities this must not be reckoned, as the hanging-wood episode, though true in itself, belongs to an earlier time, the trick having been played during the last century. When a man gets credit for the possession of any peculiarity, every story that can be raked up of a suitable kind takes him for its originator or leading spirit, and innumerable tales were at one time current with regard to the great auctioneer, of which he was perfectly innocent. So it is in other things. What did Foote, Garrick, Sheridan, Hook, Sydney Smith, Hood, Barham, Rogers, Jerrold, and numerous other of our celebrated wits, know of a quarter the sayings and doings that have been ascribed to them? Little indeed, we fancy. But there are some