ish eyes on the succeeding dawn I opened upon
the faint light, enough to distinguish, in a strange chamber not
immediately to be recognised, garters, hose, waistcoat, neckerchief,
arranged in dreadful order and proportion, which I knew was not mine
own. 'Tis the common symptom, on awaking, I judge my last night's
condition from. A tolerable scattering on the floor I hail as being too
probably my own, and if the candlestick be not removed, I assoil myself.
But this finical arrangement, this finding everything in the morning in
exact diametrical rectitude, torments me. By whom was I divested?
Burning blushes! not by the fair hands of nymphs, the Buffam Graces?
Remote whispers suggested that I _coached_ it home in triumph--far be
that from working pride in me, for I was unconscious of the locomotion;
that a young Mentor accompanied a reprobate old Telemachus; that, the
Trojan like, he bore his charge upon his shoulders, while the wretched
incubus, in glimmering sense, hiccuped drunken snatches of flying on the
bats' wings after sunset. An aged servitor was also hinted at, to make
disgrace more complete: one, to whom my ignominy may offer further
occasions of revolt (to which he was before too fondly inclining) from
the true faith; for, at a sight of my helplessness, what more was needed
to drive him to the advocacy of independency? Occasion led me through
Great Russell Street yesterday. I gazed at the great knocker. My feeble
hands in vain essayed to lift it. I dreaded that Argus Portitor, who
doubtless lanterned me out on that prodigious night. I called the
Elginian marbles. They were cold to my suit. I shall never again, I
said, on the wide gates unfolding, say without fear of thrusting back,
in a light but a peremptory air, "I am going to Mr. Cary's." I passed by
the walls of Balclutha. I had imaged to myself a zodiac of third
Wednesdays irradiating by glimpses the Edmonton dulness. I dreamed of
Highmore! I am de-vited to come on Wednesdays. Villanous old age that,
with second childhood, brings linked hand in hand her inseparable twin,
new inexperience, which knows not effects of liquor. Where I was to have
sate for a sober, middle-aged-and-a-half gentleman, literary too, the
neat-fingered artist can educe no notions but of a dissolute Silenus,
lecturing natural philosophy to a jeering Chromius or a Mnasilus. Pudet.
From the context gather the lost name of ----.

["The Buffam Graces." Lamb's landladies at Southampton B