you cannot, from
the rapidity and carelessness of his utterance, catch what he says, you
assent to it with equal confidence: you know his meaning is good. His
favourite phrase is, 'We have all of us something of the coxcomb';
and yet he has none of it himself. Before I had exchanged half a
dozen sentences with Mounsey, I found that he knew several of my old
acquaintance (an immediate introduction of itself, for the discussing
the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetener and
cement of friendship)--and had been intimate with most of the wits and
men about town for the last twenty years. He knew Tobin, Wordsworth,
Porson, Wilson, Paley, Erskine, and many others. He speaks of Paley's
pleasantry and unassuming manners, and describes Porson's long potations
and long quotations formerly at the Cider Cellar in a very lively way.
He has doubts, however, as to that sort of learning. On my saying that
I had never seen the Greek Professor but once, at the Library of the
London Institution, when he was dressed in an old rusty black coat with
cobwebs hanging to the skirts of it, and with a large patch of coarse
brown paper covering the whole length of his nose, looking for all the
world like a drunken carpenter, and talking to one of the proprietors
with an air of suavity, approaching to condescension, Mounsey could
not help expressing some little uneasiness for the credit of classical
literature. 'I submit, sir, whether common sense is not the principal
thing? What is the advantage of genius and learning if they are of no
use in the conduct of life?'--Mounsey is one who loves the hours that
usher in the morn, when a select few are left in twos and threes like
stars before the break of day, and when the discourse and the ale are
'aye growing better and better.' Wells, Mounsey, and myself were all
that remained one evening. We had sat together several hours without
being tired of one another's company. The conversation turned on the
Beauties of Charles the Second's Court at Windsor, and from thence to
Count Grammont, their gallant and gay historian. We took our favourite
passages in turn--one preferring that of Killigrew's country cousin,
who, having been resolutely refused by Miss Warminster (one of the Maids
of Honour), when he found she had been unexpectedly brought to bed,
fell on his knees and thanked God that now she might take compassion on
him--another insisting that the Chevalier Hamilton's assignation wit