202 BRANDY AND SEA SICKNESS. 



pine apple. The Danes had christened me Doctor Teology, and 

 dressed as I was all in black, with large shoes and black worsted 

 stockings, I might certainly have passed very well for a Methodist 

 missionary. However I disclaimed my title. What then may 

 you be ? A man of fortune ? No ! — A merchant ? No ! A mer- 

 chant's traveller ? No ! — A clerk ? No ! un Philosophe, perhaps ? 

 It was at that time in my life, in which of all possible names and 

 characters I had the greatest disgust to that of " un Philosophe.'' 

 But I was weary of being questioned, and rather than be nothing, 

 or at best only the abstract idea of a man, I submitted by a bow, 

 even to the aspersion implied in the word " un philosophe." — 

 The Dane then informed me, that all in the present party were 

 philosophers likewise. Certes we were not of the stoic school. 

 For we drank and talked and sung, till we talked and sung all 

 together; and then we rose and danced on the deck a set of 

 dances, which in one sense of the word at least, were very intelligi- 

 bly and appropriately in titled reels. The passengers who lay in the 

 cabin below in all the agonies of sea-sickness, must have found 

 our bachanalian merriment 



Har»h and of dissonant mood for their complaint. 



I thought so at the time; and (by way, I suppose, of supporting 

 my newly assumed philosophical character) I thought too, how 

 closely the greater number of our virtues are connected with the 

 fear of death, and how little sympathy we bestow on pain, where 

 there is no danger. 



The two Danes were brothers. The one was a man with a 

 clear wliite complexion, white hair, and white eye-brows, looked 

 silly, and nothing that he uttered gave the lie to his looks. The 

 other, whom, by way of eminence I have called the Dane, had 

 likewise white hair, but was much shorter than his brother, with 

 slender limbs, and a very thin face slightly pock-fretten. This 

 man convinced me of the justice of an old remark, that many a 

 faithful portrait in our novels and farces has been rashly cen- 

 sured for an outrageous caricature, or perhaps nonentity. I had 

 retired to my station in the boat — he came and seated himself by 

 my side, and appeared not a little tipsy. lie commenced the 

 conversation in the most magnific style, and as a sort of pioneering 

 to his own vanity, he flattered me with such grossness ! The par- 

 asites of the old comedy were modest in the comparison. His 

 language and accentuation were so exceedingly singular, that I 

 determined for once in my life to take notes of a conversation. 



