the Ettrick Shepherd, the meeting was most satisfactory; in every other
respect it was a failure."

Now let us turn to the _Court Journal_, which in its first column
decides the Burns' Dinner to have been "the most ill-conceived,
ill-concocted, ill-managed, and ill-attended affair of its kind that
ever flung disgrace and ridicule on the public hospitality of the most
inhospitable public on record." The advertised list of stewards is
described as "hoax the first." Their names were used as baits--their
presence being represented under the ominous forms of half-a-dozen
well-known illustrious unknowns, headed by two "enterprising"
booksellers! there being not a single distinguished writer present,
except Mr. Lockhart, and he evidently _cutting_ the whole affair,--so
far I mean as relates to taking any part in the (mis)management of it.
Nevertheless, I see by the Papers, that "all the leading characters of
the Metropolis were present! the poetical department of them being
represented by Lord Porchester, and the prose department by Lord Mahon."
Our Court visiter bears his lot with good humour: but, observes he "not
small must have been the contemptuous pity felt for me, by those
superior intelligences who, on my entering the Dinner Room, I found had
already secured their seats, probably by the only practical method--that
of taking possession of them overnight! And there is no denying the wit
of this proceeding, on the part of those who were in the secret, that
the repast was ordered for two hundred individuals, (nine-tenths of them
probably _Scotch_ individuals) and was to be partaken of by _four_
hundred." This proportion is probably correct, since "nine-tenths," are
the precise proportion of the company gratified.--(_See the Gazette_.)

Among the _élite_, or the company at the upper table, "Sir Peter Laurie
was one, and Mr. Lockhart was not _one_: for he sat among the