of marriage, had not his ambition been a little too inordinate, and
his heart still biased by a passion, which all the levity of youth could
not balance, nor all the pride of vanity overcome. Nor was our hero
unmarked in the world of letters and taste; he had signalized himself in
several poetical productions, by which he had acquired a good share of
reputation: not that the pieces were such as ought to have done much
honour to his genius; but any tolerable performance from a person of his
figure and supposed fortune, will always be considered by the bulk of
readers as an instance of astonishing capacity; though the very same
production, ushered into the world with the name of an author in less
affluent circumstances would be justly disregarded and despised; so
much is the opinion of most people influenced and overawed by ridiculous
considerations.

Be this as it will, our young gentleman was no sooner distinguished
as an author, than he was marked out as a patron by all the starving
retainers to poetry; he was solemnised in odes, celebrated in epigrams,
and fed with the milk of soft dedication. His vanity even relished this
incense; and, though his reason could not help despising those that
offered it, not one of them was sent away unowned by his munificence.
He began to think himself, in good earnest, that superior genius which
their flattery had described; he cultivated acquaintance with the wits
of fashion, and even composed in secret a number of bon-mots, which
he uttered in company as the impromptus of his imagination. In this
practice, indeed, he imitated some of the most renowned geniuses of the
age, who, if the truth were known, have laboured in secret, with the
sweat of their brows, for many a repartee which they have vended as the
immediate production of fancy and expression. He was so successful in
this exercise of his talents, that his fame actually came in competition
with that great man who had long sat at the helm of wit; and, in a
dialogue that once happened between them, on the subject of a corkscrew,
wherein the altercation was discharged, according to Bayes, slap for
slap, dash for dash, our hero was judged to have the better of his
lordship, by some of the minor satellites, that commonly surround and
reflect the rays of such mighty luminaries.

In a word, he dipped himself so far in these literary amusements, that
he took the management of the pit into his direction, putting himself
at the head of