40t> Dreary wit and his Friends. [APRIL, 



perverse old cat would oftentimes enunciate ; so little willing, indeed, 

 that a. dispute having one day arisen, the ferocious fiend sought to esta- 

 blish her point, as usual, by calling to her assistance that ligneous co- 

 adjutor her crutch ; when the vivacious youth, turning upon herself her 

 own instrument, made such a reprisal upon her pericranium, as com- 

 pletely demolished the organ of memory for one while, and set the 

 prismatic colours dancing before her eyes in a somewhat complicated 

 and incessant figure. 



And now he was become of a fitting age to benefit by the more prac- 

 tical and profound precepts of Earthworm, and the subtle and ingenious 

 sophisms of Gulph ; both of whom found a singular delight in grafting 

 tlie slips of their experience where the moral fruit was likely to be 

 abundant, and of rapid growth. Now, as the characters of these gentle- 

 men were somewhat strange and opposite, it may not be irrelevant to 

 record them here. Earthworm, held of a verity that every man was 

 better off, and de facto, a better man than himself, who possessed any 

 one species of property, not common and accessible on the instant to 

 him, the said Earthworm, and his chief object, accordingly, was to lay 

 his fingers upon such property in the most amiable attitude possible. 

 He maintained, that it was better to be a toadeater, than eat nothing at 

 all, and he would have administered flattery to old Nick himself, if he 

 could have got his matches dipt in brimstone for nothing by it. He 

 was like the " camomile that thrives the more 'tis trodden upon," and 

 he would have welcomed a kicking, if it were understood to entitle him 

 to a fair claim upon your good offices in future. His piety, however, 

 was orthodox, and the parson and he were the best friends in the world. 

 Not so Gulph, whose honesty was the fear of the gallows, and whose 

 religion was a dread of the devil. Gulph was a kind of Timon, with a 

 considerable resemblance to Sir Giles Overreach : and was alternately 

 railing at, and robbing the world with an intensity of satisfaction incon- 

 ceivable to the mere rogue in grain. He would have been considered 

 a very grave person in the cave of Trophonius, but he had his laugh out 

 in private. Withal, he was always having a fling at human nature, and 

 complaining, that there was no friendship and sincerity in this life, 

 that there was no community of feeling, but a mere interchange of 

 snuff-boxes. He admitted, there might be such a sentiment as friend- 

 ship, but thought that our own friends tended to fix us in a contrary 

 belief; and said, that their hearts might be in the right place, but he 

 should be glad to know where they were. I am not sure, for my part, 

 that Gulph was not correct in these latter conclusions; for it just now 

 occurs to me, we do not find that our friends exhibit much alacrity, or 

 appear very solicitous about paying our debts, or alert at securing our 

 convenience and comfort. But I apprehend, it is all owing to that 

 cursed linsey-wolsey material of which this said human nature is com- 

 posed. " We cannot make a silk purse," &c., the proverb is a trite one, 

 or if we could, it would commonly be found that we had got the wrong 

 sow by the ear. 



By these worthies, then, was our friend Drearywit, rendered conver- 

 sant in early youth with such branches of knowledge, as would in course 

 of time have sufficed to make him a pretty accomplished rascal ; and it 

 is far from improbable, that he profited not a little by the lessons vouch- 

 safed unto him by these sages, for he seized upon every opportunity of 

 wheedling Earthworm out of such coinage as that curmudgeon found it 



