yed a few
remaining days he had to live in making and executing his will; in which
he bequeathed large estates in different parts of England, money in the
funds, rich jewels, rings, and all kinds of valuables to his old friends
and acquaintance, who, not knowing how far the force of nature could go,
were not for some time convinced that all this fairy wealth had never
had an existence anywhere but in the idle coinage of his brain, whose
whims and projects were no more!--The extreme keeping in this character
is only to be accounted for by supposing such an original constitutional
levity as made truth entirely indifferent to him, and the serious
importance attached to it by others an object of perpetual sport and
ridicule!

The art of will-making chiefly consists in baffling the importunity of
expectation. I do not so much find fault with this when it is done as
a punishment and oblique satire on servility and selfishness. It is
in that case _Diamond cut Diamond_--a trial of skill between the
legacy-hunter and the legacy-maker, which shall fool the other. The
cringing toad-eater, the officious tale-bearer, is perhaps well paid for
years of obsequious attendance with a bare mention and a mourning-ring;
nor can I think that Gil Blas' library was not quite as much as the
coxcombry of his pretensions deserved. There are some admirable scenes
in Ben Jonson's _Volpone,_ showing the humours of a legacy-hunter, and
the different ways of fobbing him off with excuses and assurances of not
being forgotten. Yet it is hardly right, after all, to encourage this
kind of pitiful, barefaced intercourse without meaning to pay for it,
as the coquette has no right to jilt the lovers she has trifled with.
Flattery and submission are marketable commodities like any other, have
their price, and ought scarcely to be obtained under false pretences. If
we see through and despise the wretched creature that attempts to impose
on our credulity, we can at any time dispense with his services: if we
are soothed by this mockery of respect and friendship, why not pay him
like any other drudge, or as we satisfy the actor who performs a part
in a play by our particular desire? But often these premeditated
disappointments are as unjust as they are cruel, and are marked with
circumstances of indignity, in proportion to the worth of the object.
The suspecting, the taking it for granted that your name is down in the
will, is sufficient provocation to have it st