The study of oratory: Remarks on fashionable manners and their consequences: A public dinner: Emotions at the meeting of quondam acquaintance: Amenity without doors and anger within compatible: A discovery made by the Baronet: The contending passions of surprise, resentment, and pity: Ravages committed by vice: An awful scene, or a warning to gluttony

Previous to this event, I should have imagined it impossible to have increased my affection: yet, if admiration be the basis of love, as I am persuaded it is, my love was certainly increased. I now seemed to be setting forward on a journey, of the length of which I was indeed wholly ignorant; but the road was made plain, and the end was inexpressible happiness. I should therefore travel with unwearied alacrity.

But, that I might shorten this unmeasured length of way, it was necessary I should be as active in pursuit as I was ardent in my passion: and the stimulus was a strong one. Oratory accordingly, Olivia excepted, became the object that seemed the dearest to my heart. Demosthenes and Cicero were my great masters. They and their modern competitors were my study, day and night. No means were neglected that precept or example, as far as they came within my knowledge, could afford: and the additional intercourse which I thus acquired with man, his motives, actions, and heart, was a school of the highest order.

I did not however entirely confine myself to the society of the dead: the living likewise constituted a seminary, in which I found frequent opportunities of gaining instruction. Impelled by curiosity and ambition, I was not remiss in cultivating an acquaintance among those people of fashion to whom I gained access.

But, as the tribe that bestow on themselves this titillating epithet have a light and versatile character, as they abound in praises that are void of discrimination, and promises that are unmeaning, and affect at one moment the most winning urbanity, and at the next the most supercilious arrogance, though they gave me much pleasure, they likewise gave me exquisite pain.

The more I became acquainted with them, the more I was amazed, that the man who had been talking to me in the evening on terms of the utmost apparent equality, if I met him the next morning, did not know me.

Some of them would even gaze full in my face, as if to enquire—'Who are you, sir?' but in reality to insult me. The looks of these most courteous and polished people seem to say 'In the name of all that is high-bred, how does it happen that persons of fashion do not unite to stare every such impertinent upstart out of their company?'

Of all the insolence that disturbs society, and puts it in a state of internal warfare, the insolence of fashion wounds and imbitters the most. It instantly provokes the offended person to enquire—'What kind of being is it, that takes upon him to brave, insult, and despise me? Has he more strength, more activity, more understanding than myself?' In numerous instances, he is imbecile in body, more imbecile still in mind, and contemptible in person. Nay he is often little better than a driveller.

He, whom the hauteur of fashion has compelled to reason thus, will soon be led to further and more serious inferences.

Nothing can reconcile men, so as to induce them to remain peaceable spectators of enjoyments beyond their attainment, except that unaffected benevolence which shall continually actuate the heart to communicate all the happiness it has the power to bestow. This only can so temper oppression as to render gradual and orderly reform practicable.

But I am talking to the winds.

This wavering between extreme civility and rudeness was conspicuous in the behaviour of the Bray family toward me. Her Ladyship, at one moment, would overlook me, I being present, as if no such person had been in existence: or as if he were not half so worthy of attention as her lap-dog; for, as a proof, on the lap-dog it was lavished: yet, at another, I was absolutely the most charming man on earth. I had positively the most refined taste, good breeding, and all that that she had ever known.

With Sir Barnard I was sometimes an oracle. To me his discourse was directed, to my judgment his appeals were made, and my opinions were decisive. In other fits he would not condescend to notice me. If I interfered with a sentence, he would pursue the conversation as if an objection made by me were unworthy of an answer; and perhaps, if I asked him a question, he would affect to be deaf, and make no reply.

These are arts which render the condition of a supposed inferior truly hateful: and, as they were severely felt, they were severely remembered, and now and then retaliated in a spirit which I cannot applaud.

If the history of such emotions were traced through all their consequences, and if men were aware how much the principal events of their lives are the result of the petty ebullitions of passion, that branch of morals which should regulate the temper of mind, tone of voice, and expression of the countenance, would become a very serious study.

This remark is as old as Adam: and yet it relates to a science that is only in its infancy.

How fatal the want of such a necessary command of temper had been to me the reader already knows: and, though at moments I was painfully conscious of the defect, and it was become less obtrusive, it was far from cured. It still hovered over and influenced my fate: as will be seen.

The old parliament was not yet dissolved: it had met, and was sitting. But the defection of Sir Barnard's member was of late date; and, as the Baronet had his motives for not wishing to provoke the honorable member whom he had made too violently, there was a kind of compromise; and the apostate was suffered to keep his seat, during the short remainder of the term.

Sir Barnard however, as I have said, delighted in his prop. It was as necessary to him as his cane; and I generally accompanied him, when he visited any kind of political assemblies.

It happened that there was an annual dinner of the gentlemen who had been educated at *******; of which dinner Sir Barnard was appointed one of the stewards. That he might acquit himself of this arduous task with eclat, I was of course presented with a ticket; and attended as his aid de camp.

The company was numerous, and the stewards and the chairman met something more early than the rest, to regulate the important business of the day.

When I entered the committee room, with the Baronet, the first person that caught my eye was the Earl of Idford.

I shrunk back. I had a momentary hesitation whether I should insult him or instantly quit the company; and disdain to enter an apartment polluted by his presence.

I had however just good sense enough to recollect that a quarrel, in such a place, nobody knew why, would be equally ridiculous and rash: and that to avoid any man was cowardly.

The thought awakened me; and, collecting myself, I advanced with a firm and cool air.

Habit and perversity of system had done that for his lordship to which his fortitude was inadequate. He was at least as cool, and as intrepid, as myself; and bowed to me with the utmost ease and civility. To return his bow was infinitely more repulsive than taking a toad in my hand: yet to forbear would have been a violation of the first principles of the behaviour of a gentleman. I therefore reluctantly and formally complied. I hope the reader remembers how earnestly I condemn this want of temper in myself.

His lordship took not the least notice of the coldness of my manner; but, with simpering complacency, 'hoped I had been well, since he had had the pleasure of seeing me.'

My reply was another slight inclination of the head, tinctured with disdain: on which his lordship turned his back, with a kind of open-mouthed nonchalance that was truly epigrammatic; and fell into conversation with Sir Barnard, who had advanced toward the fire, with all the apparent ease of the most intimate friendship: though, since his lordship had changed sides, they had become, in politics at least, the most outrageous enemies.

This brought a train of reflections into my mind, on the behaviour of political partisans toward each other; and on the efforts they make, after they have been venting the most cutting sarcasms in their mutual parliamentary attacks, to behave out of doors as if they had totally forgotten what had passed within: or were incapable, if not of feeling, of remembering insult.

What is most remarkable, the men of greatest talent exert this amenity with the greatest effect: for they utter and receive the most biting reproaches, yet meet each other as if no such bickerings had ever passed.

It is not then, in characters like these, hypocrisy?

No. It is an effort to live in harmony with mankind: yet to speak the truth and tell them of their mistakes unsparingly, and regardless of personal danger. In other words, it is an attempt to perform the most sacred of duties: but the manner of performing it effectually has hitherto been ill understood.

Sir Barnard had witnessed the short scene between me and his lordship; and presently took occasion to ask me in a whisper, 'How and where we had become acquainted?'

I replied 'I had resided in the house of his lordship.'

'Ay, indeed!' said the Baronet. 'In what capacity?'

My pride was piqued, and I answered, 'As his companion; and, as I was taught to suppose myself, his friend. But I was soon cured of my mistake.'

'By what means?'

'By his lordship's patriotism. By the purity of his politics.'

I spoke with a sneer, and the Baronet burst into a malicious laugh of triumph: but, unwilling that the cause of it should be suspected, it was instantly restrained.

'What concern had you,' continued he, 'in his lordship's politics?'

'I have reason to believe I helped to reconcile him to the Minister.'

'You, Mr. Trevor! How came you to do so unprincipled, so profligate, a thing?'

'It was wholly unintentional.'

'I do not understand you.'

'I wrote certain letters that were printed in the ——'

'What, Mr. Trevor! were you the author of the three last letters of
Themistocles?'

'I was.'

The Baronet's face glowed with exultation. 'I knew,' said he with a vehement but under voice, 'he never wrote them himself! I have said it a thousand times; and I am not easily deceived. Every body said the same.'

There is no calculating how much the knowledge of this circumstance raised me in Sir Barnard's opinion; and consequently elevated himself, in the idea he conceived of his own power. 'Had he indeed got hold of the author of Themistocles? Why then he was a great man! A prodigious senator! The wish of his heart was accomplished! He could now wreak vengeance where he most wished it to fall; and fall it should, without mercy or remission.' His little soul was on tip-toe, and he overlooked the world.

Though we had retired to the farthest corner of the room, and his lordship pretended to be engaged in chit chat with persons who were proud of his condescension, I could perceive his suspicions were awakened. His eye repeatedly gave enquiring glances; and, while it endeavoured to counterfeit indifference by a stare, it was disturbed and contracted by apprehension.

Malignity, hatred, and revenge, are closely related; and of these passions men of but little mental powers are very susceptible. It is happy for society that their impotence impedes the execution of their desires. I was odious in the sight of Lord Idford in every point of view: for he had first injured me; which, as has been often remarked, too frequently renders him who commits the injury implacable; and he had since encountered a rival in me; which was an insult that his vanity and pride could ill indeed digest.

Still however he was a courtier; a man of fashion; a person of the best breeding; and therefore could smile.

A smile is a delightful thing, when it is the genuine offspring of the heart: but heaven defend me from the jaundiced eye, the simpering lip, and the wrinkled cheek; that turn smiles to grimace, and give the lie to open and undisguised pleasure.

It was a smile such as this that his lordship bestowed upon me, when I and the Baronet joined his group. Addressing himself to me, with a simper that anticipated the pain he intended to give, he said—'Do you know, Mr. Trevor, that your friend the bishop of **** is to dine with us? You will be glad to meet each other.'

I instantly replied, with fire in my eyes, 'I shall be as glad to meet that most pious and right reverend pastor as I was to meet your lordship.'

Agreeably to rule, he bowed; and gave the company to understand he took this as a polite acknowledgment of respect. But his gesture was accompanied with a disconcerted leer of smothered malice, which I could not misinterpret. It was sardonic; and, to me, who knew what was passing in his heart, disgusting, and painful.

I had scarcely spoken before my lord the bishop entered; and with him, as two supporters—Heavens! Who?—The president of the college where I had been educated; and the tutor, whose veto had prevented me from taking my degrees!

In the life of every man of enterprise there are moments of extreme peril. In an instant, and as it were by enchantment, I saw myself surrounded by the cowardly, servile, dwarf-demons, for so my imagination painted them, who had been my chief tormentors. Or rather by reptiles the most envenomed; with which I was shut up, as if I had been thrown into their den; and by which, if I did not exterminate them, I must expect to be devoured.

But these feelings were of short duration. My heart found an immediate repellent, both to fear and revenge, in my eyes. Good God! What were the figures now before me? Such as to excite pity, in every bosom that was not shut to commiseration for the vices into which mankind are mistakenly hurried; and for their deplorable consequences. What a fearful alteration had a few months produced! In the bishop especially!

He had been struck by the palsy, and dragged one side along with extreme difficulty. His bloated cheeks and body had fallen into deep pits; and the swelling massy parts were of a black-red hue, so that the skin appeared a bag of morbid contents. His mouth was drawn awry, his speech entirely inarticulate, his eye obscured by thick rheum, and his clothes were stained by the saliva that occasionally driveled from his lips. His legs were wasted, his breast was sunk, and his protuberant paunch looked like the receptacle of dropsy, atrophy, catarrh, and every imaginable malady.

My heart sunk within me. Poor creature! What would I have given to have possessed the power of restoring thee to something human! Resentment to thee? Alas! Had I not felt compassion, such as never can be forgotten, I surely should have despised, should have almost hated, myself.

The president was evidently travelling the same road. His legs, which had been extremely muscular, instead of being as round and smooth in their surface as they formerly were, each appeared to be covered with innumerable nodes; that formed irregular figures, and angles. What they were swathed with I cannot imagine: but I conjecture there must have been stiff brown paper next to the smooth silk stocking, which produced the irregularities of the surface. The dullness of his eyes, the slowness of their motions, his drooping eyelids, his flaccid cheeks, his hanging chin, and the bagging of his cloaths, all denoted waste, want of animation, lethargy, debility and decline.

The condition of the tutor was no less pitiable. He was gasping with an asthma; and was obliged incessantly to struggle with suffocation. It was what physicians call a confirmed case: while he lived, he was doomed to live in pain. Where is the tyrant that can invent tortures, equal to those which men invent for themselves?

These were the guests who were come to feast: to indulge appetites they had never been able to subdue, though their appetites were vipers that were eating away their vitals.

How strongly did this scene bring to my recollection Pope on the ruling passion! I could almost fancy I heard the poor bishop quoting

'Mercy! cries Helluo, mercy on my soul!
'Is there no hope?—Alas!—Then bring the jowl.'

The present man is but the slave of the past. What induced the president and the tutor, when the bishop's more able-bodied footmen had rather carried than conducted him up stairs, officially to become his supporters as he entered the room? Was it unmixed humanity? Or was it those servile habits to which their cunning had subjected them? and by which they supposed not only that preferment but that happiness was attainable.

Humanity doubtless had its share; for it is a sensation that never utterly abandons the breast of man: and, as it is often strengthened by a consciousness that we ourselves are in need of aid, let us suppose that the president and the tutor were become humane.

Though feelings of acrimony towards these persons were entirely deadened in me by the spectacle I beheld, yet I knew not well how to behave. I was prompted to shew them how placable I was become, by accosting them first: but this might be misconstrued into that servility for which I had thought of them with so much contempt. Beside, the bishop and the president, if not the tutor, were in the phraseology of the world my superiors; and etiquette had established the rule that, if they thought proper to notice me, they would be the first to salute.

His lordship however eased me of farther trouble on this head, by asking the bishop—'Have you forgotten your old acquaintance Mr. Trevor, my lord?'

What answer this consecrated right reverend father returned I could not hear. He muttered something: but the sounds were as unintelligible as the features of his face; or the drooping deadness of his eyes. The president, however, hearing this, thought proper to bow: though very slightly, till the earl added, with a significant emphasis on the two last words—'Sir Barnard is become Mr. Trevor's particular friend;' which was no sooner pronounced than the countenances of both the bishop's supporters changed, to something which might be called exceedingly civil, in the tutor, and prodigiously condescending, in the president.

This was a memorable day: and, if the event which I have now to relate should be offensive to the feelings of any man, or any class of men, I can only say that I share the common fate of historians: who, though they should relate nothing but facts, never fail to excite displeasure, if not resentment and persecution, in the partisans of this or that particular opinion, faction, or establishment.

The dinner was served. It was sumptuous: or rather such as gluttony delights in. The persons assembled, I am sorry to say it, were several of them gluttons; and encouraged and countenanced each other in the vice to which they were addicted.

Dish succeeded to dish: and one plateful was but devoured that another and another might be gorged.

Fatal insensibility to the warning voice of experience!
Incomprehensible blindness!

The poor bishop was unable to resist his destiny.

I had a foreboding of the mischief that might result from a stomach at once so debilitated and so overloaded. I wished to have spoken: I was tempted to exclaim—'Rash man, beware!' I could not keep my eyes away from him: till at length I suddenly remarked a strange appearance, that came over his face; and, almost at the same instant, he dropped from his chair in an apoplectic fit.

The description of his foaming mouth, distorted features, dead eyes, the whites of which only were to be seen, his writhings, his—

No! I must forbear. The picture I witnessed could give nothing but pain; mingled with disgust, and horror. If I suggest that poor oppressed nature made the most violent struggles, to empty and relieve herself, there will perhaps be more than sufficient of the scene of which I was a spectator conjured up in the imagination.

The bishop had been a muscular man, with a frame of uncommon strength; and the paroxysm, though extreme, did not end in death. Medical assistance was obtained, and he was borne away as soon as the crisis was over: but the festivity for which the company had met was disturbed. Many of them were struck with terror; dreading lest they had only been present at horrors that, soon or late, were to light upon themselves. They departed appalled by the scene they had witnessed, and haunted by images of a foreboding, black, and distracted kind.

From these Sir Barnard himself was not wholly free: though he had been less guilty of gormandizing than many of his associates: and, for my own part, this incident left an impression upon me which I am persuaded will be salutary through life.