ative paths. He ascends the empyrean
heaven, and is not intoxicated. He treads the burning marl
without dismay; he wins his flight without self-loss through
realms of chaos "and old night." Or if, abandoning himself
to that severer chaos of a "human mind untuned," he is
content awhile to be mad with Lear, or to hate mankind (a
sort of madness) with Timon; neither is that madness, nor
this misanthropy, so unchecked, but that--never letting the
reins of reason wholly go, while most he seems to do so--he
has his better genius whispering at his ear, with the good
servant Kent suggesting saner counsels; or with the honest
steward Flavius recommending kindlier resolutions. Where he
seems most to recede from humanity, he will be found the
truest to it.

"Captain Jackson" is an unforgettable picture of a poor man who would
_not_ be poor; his manners made a plated spoon appear as silver
sugar-tongs, a homely bench a sofa, and so on. As Elia concludes:

There is some merit in putting a handsome face upon indigent
circumstances. To bully and swagger away the sense of them
before strangers, may not always be discommendable. Tibbs
and Bobadil, even when detected, have more of our admiration
than contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon himself;
to play the Bobadil at home; and, steeped in poverty up to
the lips, to fancy himself all the while chin-deep in
riches, is a strain of constitutional philosophy, and a
mastery over fortune, which was reserved for my old friend
Captain Jackson.

With the next essay of this collection, that on "The Superannuated
Man," we come to one of the most notable of the series of Elia's
transmutations of matters of private experience into precious
literature. The paper is as autobiographic as any of his letters: some
slight changes--as of the East India House to the name of a city
firm--are made, but for the rest it is a record of his retirement with
a revelation of the feelings attendant upon the change from having to
go daily to an office for thirty-six years to being suddenly free:

For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwhelmed. I
could only apprehend my felicity; I was too confused to
taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking I was happy
and knowing that I was not. I was in the condition of a
prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose