stioning what was the degree of
information I possessed, and how it was obtained. But again at our next
interview the simple vivacity of my manner restored his tranquillity,
obliterated the emotion of which I had been the cause, and placed
things afresh in their former situation.

The longer this humble familiarity on my part had continued, the more
effort it would require to suppress it; and Mr. Falkland was neither
willing to mortify me by a severe prohibition of speech, nor even
perhaps to make me of so much consequence, as that prohibition might
seem to imply. Though I was curious, it must not be supposed that I had
the object of my enquiry for ever in my mind, or that my questions and
innuendoes were perpetually regulated with the cunning of a grey-headed
inquisitor. The secret wound of Mr. Falkland's mind was much more
uniformly present to his recollection than to mine; and a thousand times
he applied the remarks that occurred in conversation; when I had not the
remotest idea of such an application, till some singularity in his
manner brought it back to my thoughts. The consciousness of this morbid
sensibility, and the imagination that its influence might perhaps
constitute the whole of the case, served probably to spur Mr. Falkland
again to the charge, and connect a sentiment of shame, with every
project that suggested itself for interrupting the freedom of our
intercourse.

I will give a specimen of the conversations to which I allude; and, as
it shall be selected from those which began upon topics the most general
and remote, the reader will easily imagine the disturbance that was
almost daily endured by a mind so tremblingly alive as that of my
patron.

"Pray, sir," said I, one day as I was assisting Mr. Falkland in
arranging some papers, previously to their being transcribed into his
collection, "how came Alexander of Macedon to be surnamed the Great?"

"How came it? Did you never read his history?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, Williams, and could you find no reasons there?"

"Why, I do not know, sir. I could find reasons why he should be so
famous; but every man that is talked of is not admired. Judges differ
about the merits of Alexander. Doctor Prideaux says in his Connection,
that he deserves only to be called the Great Cut-throat; and the author
of Tom Jones has written a volume, to prove that he and all other
conquerors ought to be classed with Jonathan Wild."

Mr. Falkland reddened at these citations