402 Drearywit and his Friends. [APRIL, 



and I verily believe would refuse sufficient annuities, if they were 

 thereby prevented from pursuing their destructive and disastrous avo- 

 cations. 



I would that the foregoing moral reflections had not been called forth, 

 and the extent of reprehension contained in them were not applicable, in 

 a mournful degree, to my friend Drearywit, who has all his days (so to 

 speak) been casting his bread upon the waters until he has quite got rid 

 of the loaves and fishes, and who was no more expected by his numerous 

 connections to be seen in the path of life he chose to perambulate, than 

 you might indulge reasonable expectation of meeting a cow in a milk- 

 walk. I say, it is not a little astonishing, as the world goes, to find a 

 man stepping over the heads of others ; still more surprising to behold 

 him wandering about on his own ; but most marvellous, when we dis- 

 cover him running his proper skull against a post in the most ruinous 

 and persevering manner. Conceive a distracted muffin-maker plying 

 for custom on Salisbury Plain ; or a petitioner tweaking the nose of his 

 patron ; or a runaway banker, who has once " hopp'd the twig," return- 

 ing to repeat such saltatory movement ; you can, after all, conceive no 

 extent of folly, imprudence, or madness, at all comparable with the 

 visionary day-dreams of my friend. But I will not anticipate. 



Let me, however, do strict justice. Drearywit was as far as possible 

 removed from any sympathy with those whining sentimentalists who 

 creep about as grave and watery as an undertaker on St. Swithin's day, 

 and mysterious as a maiden speech : he was not one of that tribe of dis- 

 satisfied rascals, 'yclept misanthropes, who rush headlong into a sea of 

 troubles, like their swinish prototypes in the New Testament, and when 

 they should be endeavouring to swim, cut their own throats : he was 

 not one of those against whom the stigmatizing name of twaddler is 

 launched, neither could he, after any fair process of investigation, be 

 accounted a bore. But why do I waste my time in these negative state- 

 ments ? Drearywit' s character was ever, I believe, in all the domestic 

 relations, unimpeachable, and any posthumous notice respecting him 

 may be, accordingly, engraved on his tomb (when he shall take it upon 

 himself to die) without giving occasion for a blush to his panegyrist or 

 an incredulous grin to the stone-cutter. 



But it is in quite a distinct light that I would at present view him ; I 

 would fain, as it were with a lever, upraise his bulk into the air of 

 reason and philosophy, that the rays of truth may fall upon the dense 

 mass of frail and incommunicable flesh, and that I may, finally, be en- 

 abled to draw his frailties from their brittle tenement with satisfaction to 

 myself and advantage to the reader. 



CHAPTER SECOND. 



It is neither my duty nor my inclination to be censorious or uncha- 

 ritable. I do not profess to be a modern Diogenes, looking after honest 

 men with a pair of lantern jaws, and creeping into a kilderkin if I can- 

 not find them ; moreover, it is no concern of mine whether the commu- 

 nity be honest or otherwise. I should certainly prefer grasping my 

 friend's hand in any other place than my own pocket, and I should 

 duly deplore the deficiency of the moral sense in one whom I might dis- 

 cover in the act of plundering my pantry or secreting my spoons. But, 

 as I have hinted, I am not curious upon these points of morality. I 

 have, accordingly, the less hesitation in condensing long dissipated and 



