. He passed many hours daily in
those haunts. Besides drinking, which, alas! is past praying for; you must
know it, he owned, too, ladies that he indulged in that odious practice of
smoking. Poor fellow! He was a man's man, remember. The only woman he
_did_ know, he didn't write about. I take it there would not have been
much humour in that story.

He likes to go and sit in the smoking-room at the Grecian, or the Devil;
to pace "Change and the Mall"(92)--to mingle in that great club of the
world--sitting alone in it somehow: having goodwill and kindness for every
single man and woman in it--having need of some habit and custom binding
him to some few; never doing any man a wrong (unless it be a wrong to hint
a little doubt about a man's parts, and to damn him with faint praise);
and so he looks on the world and plays with the ceaseless humours of all
of us--laughs the kindest laugh--points our neighbour's foible or
eccentricity out to us with the most good-natured, smiling confidence; and
then, turning over his shoulder, whispers _our_ foibles to our neighbour.
What would Sir Roger de Coverley be without his follies and his charming
little brain-cracks?(93) If the good knight did not call out to the people
sleeping in church, and say "Amen" with such a delightful pomposity: if he
did not make a speech in the assize-court _a propos de bottes_, and merely
to show his dignity to Mr. Spectator:(94) if he did not mistake Madam Doll
Tearsheet for a lady of quality in Temple Garden: if he were wiser than he
is: if he had not his humour to salt his life, and were but a mere English
gentleman and game-preserver--of what worth were he to us? We love him for
his vanities as much as his virtues. What is ridiculous is delightful in
him: we are so fond of him because we laugh at him so. And out of that
laughter, and out of that sweet weakness, and out of those harmless
eccentricities and follies, and out of that touched brain, and out of that
honest manhood and simplicity--we get a result of happiness, goodness,
tenderness, pity, piety; such as, if my audience will think their reading
and hearing over, doctors and divines but seldom have the fortune to
inspire. And why not? Is the glory of Heaven to be sung only by gentlemen
in black coats? Must the truth be only expounded in gown and surplice, and
out of those two vestments can nobody preach it? Commend me to this dear
preacher without orders--this parson in the tye-wig. When this man