CHAPTER VIII.

A CONTRAST.

I'll teach you differences.

SHAKSPEARE.

THE walk and conversation by the canal, lasted longer than mine with Harclai. I relate not their result here, because it will come in better in another place. At present, I wish merely to introduce to the reader my new friends, among whom I was persuaded to remain many weeks. In short, I passed much time in the precincts of Talbois. I was invited to Dr. Herbert's, where I spent many days at a time, in a manner and in conversation which gave me great delight. The President was full of knowledge, natural and acquired. His abilities were of the first cast. Shrewd and observing, as well as learned, he knew, but by no means hated the world; and when cultivated with sincerity, as he was by me, no one could be more open, or impart himself with greater facility. A little

pomp perhaps, a little pride, in having from personal merit alone achieved that which the highest dignities, and even power, cannot always effect for other men, would peep out amidst his confidences. But Harclai also had pride, and the pride of both seemed pardonable. What struck me, however, was that the President inveighed against the pride of De Vere; lamented that so fine a mind, with such elegant cultivation, and supported by such general ability, should all be marred, together with the hopes of advancement, (which from the inferiority of his fortune to his rank, was very necessary to him,) by a proud nature, rendered prouder by that very inferiority. "His own native dignity," said the President, "is so great, that he can afford to unbend a little, and yet preserve independence sufficient to carry an ordinary man through the world with honour. But, to my great vexation, who love him so much, he adds to it a morbid sensibility which has only increased his mistakes; and, what is not least, a spirit of romance which makes it more difficult to cure them.”

In the course of our communication, the President gave me his proofs of this: to which he was encouraged, he said, by the confidence which De Vere had reposed in me himself, and,

as he was pleased to add, that I might not throw myself away at every little temporary disgust with a world which, after all, said he, we were made for, with all its faults.

Young (and perhaps romantic) as I was, I own this seemed no more than the language of good sense. From the President's lips, it also seemed the language of fair experience, avoiding the extremes of an enthusiast, which he certainly was not. For though embowered, if I may so say, in the quiet and learned retreats of Oxford, of which he was the ornament, he had been long in the world, and was even now by no means out of it. The difference was, "that the men of the world now came to him; whereas, before, he lived in the midst of them, a distinction by no means unremarked, or unpleasing to this practical observer of mankind.

How great a contrast to this was Harclai! He had not the deeper learning of the President, though he had much even of that, having turned a long leisure to account by study. But he confessed it was useless, except as far as books described men. Hence the satirists of Rome and of modern times, Horace, Juvenal, Boileau, and Pope; and the more just observers of mankind, as Shakspeare and Montaigne, were

now his only authors, and of these he could make copious use. He would have included Swift, but that he had early, he said, detected him in the very hypocrisy he railed against: and unmasked the most enslaved of courtiers in the would-be despiser of courts. Unfortunately, this penetrating shrewdness in seizing the weak and vicious side of things, was sufficiently, he thought, supported by experience, to make him not merely a theorist.

He was of an ancient family and fair fortune; but for which last, he would perhaps have pursued the bar, after he had assumed its gown. His rank in life gave him access to the great, particularly in the country where he was known; but a natural plainness of manner, and indifference to what might be thought of him, made him little welcome in high society. It occasioned the first great wound his feelings sustained.

He had a brother left wholly dependant upon him, whom he got placed about the court. This brother, as much his opposite in personal graces as mental merit, implored his assistance to enable him to marry the daughter of a nobleman supposed to be rising in court favour. He imme

diately settled upon him a considerable part of his fortune. But the lady was fine, and the brother ungrateful. Harclai's plainness and sincerity were disagreeable to his sister-in-law's family; he was neglected, and even ridiculed by those whom his bounty had made happy; and he left their house, like another Lear. His disgust was interminable, and his affections for ever bruised.

A kinsman now consulted him in the choice of a wife. Harclai had known the lady from her cradle, and approved with all his heart.

Within the first year she eloped; and the husband, attended by Harclai, called the seducer to the field. But he there fell himself: and, as was said, the adultress beheld the combat. The seducer afterwards was promoted in the army, and rose to a great post in the state; and the adultress, again married, became the centre of fashion.

A thousand instances, as he said, had met his observation of principles renounced, benefits forgotten, and friends unremembered. But what roused his disgust more than any thing else, was an affront to his honour, which he said he should resent upon mankind to his dying day.