My health, never robust, gave way beneath study
and irritation. I was ordered to betake myself to the country. I
came to this village, as one both salubrious and obscure. I lodged
in the house of your aunt; you came hither daily,--I saw you,--you
know the rest. But where, all this time, were my noble friends?
you will say. 'Sdeath, since we had left college, they had learned
a little of the wisdom I had then possessed; they were not disposed
to give something for nothing; they had younger brothers, and
cousins, and mistresses, and, for aught I know, children to provide
for. Besides, they had their own expenses; the richer a man is, the
less he has to give. One of them would have bestowed on me a
living, if I had gone into the Church; another, a commission if I
had joined his regiment. But I knew the day was past both for
priest and soldier; and it was not merely to live, no, nor to live
comfortably, but to enjoy power, that I desired; so I declined these
offers. Others of my friends would have been delighted to have kept
me in their house, feasted me, joked with me, rode with me, nothing
more! But I had already the sense to see that if a man dances
himself into distinction, it is never by the steps of attendance.
One must receive favours and court patronage, but it must be with
the air of an independent man. My old friends thus rendered
useless, my legal studies forbade me to make new, nay, they even
estranged me from the old; for people may say what they please about
a similarity of opinions being necessary to friendship,--a
similarity of habits is much more so. It is the man you dine,
breakfast, and lodge with, walk, ride, gamble, or thieve with, that
is your friend; not the man who likes Virgil as well as you do, and
agrees with you in an admiration of Handel. Meanwhile my chief
prey, Lord Mauleverer, was gone; he had taken another man's
Dulcinea, and sought out a bower in Italy. From that time to this I
have never heard of him nor seen him; I know not even his address.
With the exception of a few stray gleanings from my brother, who,
good easy man! I could plunder more, were I not resolved not to
ruin the family stock, I have been thrown on myself; the result is
that, though as clever as my fellows, I have narrowly shunned
starvat