ke
emendations in it, and correct the errors that have inadvertently slipt
in. He and his dog Tray are much the same honest, simple-hearted,
faithful, affectionate creatures--if Tray could but read! His mind cannot
take the impression of vice: but the gentleness of his nature turns gall
to milk. He would not hurt a fly. He draws the picture of mankind from the
guileless simplicity of his own heart: and when he dies, his spirit will
take its smiling leave, without having ever had an ill thought of others,
or the consciousness of one in itself!

XIX

OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN

"Come like shadows--so depart."

B---- it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well as the defence
of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. As, however, he would undertake
neither, I suppose I must do both--a task for which he would have been
much fitter, no less from the temerity than the felicity of his pen--

"Never so sure our rapture to create
As when it touch'd the brink of all we hate."

Compared with him, I shall, I fear, make but a common-place piece of
business of it; but I should be loth the idea was entirely lost, and
besides I may avail myself of some hints of his in the progress of it. I
am sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of the ideas of other people
than expounder of my own. I pursue the one too far into paradox or
mysticism; the others I am not bound to follow farther than I like, or
than seems fair and reasonable.

On the question being started, A---- said, "I suppose the two first
persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest names in English
literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke?" In this A----, as usual,
reckoned without his host. Every one burst out a laughing at the
expression of B----'s face, in which impatience was restrained by
courtesy. "Yes, the greatest names," he stammered out hastily, "but they
were not persons--not persons."--"Not persons?" said A----, looking wise
and foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be premature. "That
is," rejoined B----, "not characters, you know. By Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac
Newton, you mean the Essay on the Human Understanding, and the
_Principia_, which we have to this day. Beyond their contents there is
nothing personally interesting in the men. But what we want to see any one
_bodily_ for, is when there is something peculiar, striking in the
individuals, more than we can learn from their writings, and yet are