ho never interested his passions to any violence of
transport, nor teased him with impertinent curiosity about his private
affairs. For, though many of them had maintained a very long, close, and
friendly correspondence with each other, they never dreamt of inquiring
into particular concerns; and if one of the two who were most intimately
connected, had been asked how the other made a shift to live, he would
have answered with great truth, "Really, that is more than I know."
Notwithstanding this phlegmatic indifference, which is of the true
English production, they were all inoffensive, good-natured people, who
loved a joke and a song, delighted in telling a merry story, and prided
themselves in the art of catering, especially in the articles of fish,
venison, and wild fowl.

Our young gentleman was not received among them on the footing of a
common member, who makes interest for his admission; he was courted as a
person of superior genius and importance, and his compliance looked upon
as an honour to their society. This their idea of his pre-eminence was
supported by his conversation, which, while it was more liberal and
learned than that to which they had been accustomed, was tinctured
with an assuming air, so agreeably diffused, that, instead of producing
aversion, it commanded respect. They not only appealed to him, in all
doubts relating to foreign parts, to which one and all of them were
strangers, but also consulted his knowledge in history and divinity,
which were frequently the topics of their debates; and, in poetry of
all kinds, he decided with such magisterial authority, as even
weighed against the opinions of the players themselves. The variety of
characters he had seen and observed, and the high spheres of life in
which he had so lately moved, furnished him with a thousand entertaining
anecdotes. When he became a little familiarized to his disappointments,
so that his natural vivacity began to revive, he flashed among them in
such a number of bright sallies, as struck them with admiration, and
constituted himself a classic in wit; insomuch that they began to retail
his remnants, and even invited some particular friends to come and hear
him hold forth. One of the players, who had for many years strutted
about the taverns in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden as the Grand
Turk of wit and humour, began to find his admirers melt away; and a
certain petulant physician, who had shone at almost all the port clubs