1832.] Drcarywit and his Friend*. 407 



in his nature, after wretched inward wrestlings, to bestow ; while he 

 took delight in abstracting the spectacle cases from the pocKets of the 

 other, and in employing maledictions and outrageous abuse, accom- 

 panied by gesticulations and face-making, while the old fellow's back 

 was turned, not a little shocking to hear and to behold, 



CHAPTER FOURTH. 



As I had for many years been a constant visitor at the house of old 

 Drearywit, both before his marriage, and after the demise of his lady, 

 (who had not long survived the birth of her infant,) I felt that I also 

 had a right to mould and model the flexible organization of the lad after 

 my own fashion ; and was not unwilling to instil into his soul a few 

 grains of philosophical truth, not to be picked up by every goose of the 

 common. I was the more readily enabled to do this by reason of the 

 boy's partiality towards me ; induced, I conceive, by timely presenta- 

 tions of stomach-ache in the form of apples and unlimited pastry ; as 

 well by the amiable appearance of occasional mintage, that found favour 

 in his pocket after an emigration from mine. 



But in this design I had been in a great measure forestalled by a 

 philosophical fire-eater and water-drinker, Millwheel by name ; a man 

 of intemperate temperance, and the most uncontrollable temper. He 

 was one of those who enforce moderation in a voice of thunder, and 

 exemplify charity by buttoning up their pockets ; yea, such was the 

 ferocity of his nature, that he would have presented you with a piece of 

 bridecake on the point of a bayonet, and run you through the body by 

 way of tickling you at his excruciating jests. His voice, too, was 

 detestably horrible. A whisper from him, " came o'er the ear like the 

 sweet north east," or, an echo from the hollow caverns of Avernus, and 

 a sigh (if any such there were) resembled a blast from the Vulcanian 

 forge. 



The doctrines of this person were of a lamentable description, how- 

 beit, they have been, I mourn to say, indulged and adopted by many 

 individuals quite narrow-minded, ignorant and presumptuous enough 

 before without such aids, and sufficiently of a piece to succeed and 

 establish the previous promulgations of Earthworm and Gulph. " He 

 taught the boy to speak"' inhuman nonsense, and, as he advanced into 

 manhood, supplied him with exhaustless chatter concerning utility, and, 

 (( the greatest happiness principle," the eternal discussion of which sub- 

 jects was not only without utility, but productive of the greatest misery 

 conceivable. The first, appeared to my weak and uninitiated under- 

 standing a mere amplification of vulgar cant, which the cheesemonger is 

 beginning to be ashamed of; while the other was manifestly an anoma- 

 lous monster, begotten on a truism by the amiable principle " Every 

 one for himself;"' or, " The devil take the hindmost." 



Millwheel, a sincere convertite to these notions, and a zealous ex- 

 pounder of them, in explanation of his theory of utility, hesitated not to 

 affirm the superiority of a candle-snuffer over a Newton or a Galileo ; 

 while Milton, " that mighty orb of song," was accounted nought in 

 comparison with a mightily rotund shopkeeper. But, his greatest hap- 

 piness principle, was in no quarter so well understood as at home; 

 where to maltreat his wife, to chastise his children, and to kick his ser- 

 vants down stairs, supplied him with tolerable employment, and left 



