and this; will you do me
the favour to accept anything on my plate at this moment? And to-morrow
I'll endeavour to arrange for your being otherwise employed at this hour
than in watching _me_.' It seems a weakness, but I really cannot eat
anything under the oppression of an envious _surveillance_ like that
dog's. A man said to me, 'Oh, what need you care about _him_? He has had
_his_ dinner long ago.' True, at twelve or one o'clock; but at six he
might want another; but, if he thinks so himself, the result is the
same. And that result is what the whole South of Frankistan[3] calls the
_evil eye_. Wanting dinner, when he sees another person in the very act
of dining, the dog (though otherwise an excellent creature) must be
filled with envy; and envy is so contagiously allied to malice, that in
elder English one word expresses both those dark modifications of
hatred. The dog's eye therefore, without any consciousness on his own
part, becomes in such a case _an evil eye_: upon me, at least, it fell
with as painful an effect as any established eye of that class could do
upon the most superstitious Portuguese.

Now, such exactly is the eye of any man that, without actually
interrupting one, threatens by his impatient manner as often as one
begins to speak. It has a blighting effect upon one's spirits. And the
only resource is to say frankly (as I said to the dog), 'Would you
oblige me, sir, by taking the whole of the talk into your own hands? Do
not for ever threaten to do so, but at once boldly lay an interdict upon
any other person's speaking.'

To those who suffer from nervous irritability, the man that suspends
over our heads his _threat_ of interruption by constant impatience, is
even a more awful person to face than the actual interrupter. Either of
them is insufferable; and in cases where the tone of prevailing manners
is not vigorous enough to put such people down, or where the individual
monster, being not _couchant_ or _passant_, but (heraldically speaking)
_rampant_, utterly disregards all restraints that are not enforced by a
constable, the question comes back with greater force than ever, which I
stated at the beginning of this article, 'What's to be done?'

I really cannot imagine. Despair seizes me 'with her icy fangs,' unless
the reader can suggest something; or unless he can improve on a plan of
my own sketching.

As a talker for effect, as a _bravura_ artist in conversation, no one
has surpassed Colerid