194 ART OF TOAD-EATING. 



at higher game. We had, in our school, the son of a lord, the eldest 

 son, and the son too of a lord too, high in office. This young gentle- 

 man had some good qualities, and I took especial care that he should 

 see that I could see them. I really did admire him a little, and I 

 endeavoured to make him believe that I admired him very much ; 

 but the fact is I never did admire any one very much except myself, 

 and as for myself, I really quite wonder at myself. I so admire the 

 elegance of my manners, the neatness of my compliments, the beauti- 

 ful, delicate, unobtrusive vivacity and wit of my conversation, and I 

 have more than once endeavoured to persuade myself that I am ad- 

 mitted into the society of the great, not so much for my toad-eating 

 qualities, as for the charms of my conversation. I cut the son of the 

 baronet, and accepted the invitation of the son of the lord. 



I shall not easily forget the sensation with which I entered the 



magnificent mansion of Lord B . I could almost hear my heart 



beat. I knew nothing of Lord and Lady B , but thinks I to 



myself, if they are a couple of devils I will worship them. They were 

 not devils, but very civil well-behaved human beings. I could not 

 help wishing that I had been born a lord but what is the use of 

 wishing ? it was not likely that I should be any nearer to an unat- 

 tainable object by wishing, so I endeavoured to obtain as many of 

 the blessings of lordship as I possibly could in my situation. I there- 

 fore stuck close to the young gentleman, and having praised his 

 virtues right lustily, I endeavoured to find out his vices no great 

 difficulty perhaps. These I indulged, and I flattered them into virtues. 

 I attended him in all his sports, and became to him as a servant, 

 taking care, however, to shew that I thought myself somebody, for 

 my homage would have been nothing to him had it been equally at 

 the service of any body else. When I went home to my father's 

 house all my talk was of lords, for the atmosphere of nobility had the 

 same effect upon me as the atmosphere of Brobdignag had upon 

 Gulliver it dilated and enlarged the idea of myself. I really thought 

 that there was something noble about me. Surely, by constant colli- 

 sion with nobility, a man does acquire something of a noble air, and I 

 do think that the people who met me might guess, from my style and 

 deportment, that I was familiar with lords. I successfully acquired, 

 by means of diligent imitation, a lounging, lolloping, shuffling gait, 

 and a nice, pretty, drawling, dawdling, lackadaisical manner of 

 speaking. I did not need to learn to despise every body but myself 

 that came naturally. 



With these qualifications I went to the university. Now, very for- 

 tunately for me and my reputation, soon after I entered college I 

 happened to hear the word tuft-hunter made use of, and, upon enquir- 

 ing into the meaning of it, I found that I was in danger of becoming 

 one myself. Against this I took especial care to guard, for reputa- 

 tion was a great point with me. There is nothing grand to be done 

 in the way of toad-eating without a character. I was under no great 

 temptation to become an indiscriminate tuft-hunter, because my friend, 



the son of Lord B , was a person of much greater consequence 



than ten or a dozen of the ordinary kit of lordlings that swagger at 

 the university. So, standing at his side, I took the liberty to look 



