Madam, you take medicine--you take
a walk--you take a liberty--but you _drink_ tea,' and walked on, having,
it may be hoped, cured the lady of her admiration.

In the life of such a man there could not of course be much striking
incident. He lived for 'society,' and the whole of his story consists in
his rise and fall in that narrow world. Though admired and sought after
by the women--so much so that at his death his chief assets were locks
of hair, the only things he could not have turned into money--he never
married. Wedlock might have sobered him, and made him a more sensible,
if not more respectable member of society, but his advances towards
matrimony never brought him to the crisis. He accounted for one
rejection in his usual way. 'What could I do, my dear _fellar_,' he
lisped, 'when I actually saw Lady Mary eat cabbage?' At another time he
is said to have induced some deluded young creature to elope with him
from a ball-room, but managed the affair so ill, that the lovers (?)
were caught in the next street, and the affair came to an end. He wrote
rather ecstatic love-letters to Lady Marys and Miss ----s, gave married
ladies advice on the treatment of their spouses and was tender to
various widows, but though he went on in this way through life, he was
never, it would seem, in love, from the mere fact that he was incapable
of passion.

Perhaps he was too much of a woman to care much for women. He was
certainly egregiously effeminate. About the only creatures he could love
were poodles. When one of his dogs, from over-feeding, was taken ill, he
sent for two dog-doctors, and consulted very gravely with them on the
remedies to be applied. The canine physicians came to the conclusion
that she must be bled. 'Bled!' said Brummell, in horror; 'I shall leave
the room: inform me when the operation is over.' When the dog died, he
shed tears--probably the only ones he had shed since childhood: and
though at that time receiving money from many an old friend in England,
complained, with touching melancholy, 'that he had lost the only friend
he had!' His grief lasted three whole days, during which he shut himself
up, and would see no one; but we are not told that he ever thus mourned
over any human being.

His effeminacy was also shown in his dislike to field-sports. His
shooting exploits were confined to the murder of a pair of pet pigeons
perched on a roof, while he confessed, as regards hunting, that it was a
bore to get