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A CHAPTER ON BACHELORS, OR THE CONFESSIONS OF DRAKE 
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SOMERSET, GENT. ' 
** One day,” sald my father to my uncle Toby, ‘ I will indulge you with my tractate upon bachelors, 
J will explain to you their sufferings, point out to you, if I can, their advantages, and show you, by 
irtefragable proofs, that they are anomalies in nature.”— 
« Brother Walter,” eRe, my uncle, ** you forget that I am one myself.”— 
“ True, Toby,” quoth my father, and his eye glistened, ‘* but that is more your misfortnne than 
your crime.”"—TRISTRAM SHANDY.. 4 
Or all sublunary conditions, that of a bachelor is assuredly the most 
forlorn. Other stations have their drawbacks, their disadvantages, their 
transcient teazing annoyances, but this is a settled thing, a permanent 
misery, resulting from a sense of solitude which, creeping year after 
ear, like a blight over the mind, deadens its active energies, and leaving 
it just sufficient sensibility to appreciate its misfortunes, denies it the 
more vigorous power of escaping them. Few men, whatever pride may 
induce them to say, are bachelors from choice ; the very idea militates 
against the primary principles of nature which endowed all—some cer- 
tainly more than others—with a quick relish for society, and a desire to 
paint before death a picture of themselves in their posterity. The very 
words used now and then by some commiserating fair one to a gentle- 
man in this disconsolate condition, ‘“‘ What a nice old bachelor !” proves 
the novelty of such good humour; as if an invalid, when speaking of a 
dull November morning placed between two dangerously damp ones, 
should say, from comparison, “ what a healthy day!” Healthy indeed, 
so is a black dose! ! 
If we reason from analogy, we shall find that the most solitary animals 
are invariably the most savage and unsocial. The pike—that aquatic 
bachelor—who swims alone, feeds alone, and even sleeps alone, is a 
stern misanthropist, a piscatory Diogenes, whom no civilities can bind, 
no friendship humanize. The hyzna, in like manner among beasts, is 
your only irreclaimable animal. All other savages(even Walworth ones!* ) 
have been civilized, but this vulgar good-for-nothing bachelor defies the 
gentlest courtesy. Of the lion, I say nothing, he is to all intents and pur- 
poses a married man, with, generally speaking, a strong relish for domes- 
tic society. But who, I ask, could ever yet tame the vulture, that 
“winged single gentleman,” who dwelleth apart from his kinsfolk and 
acquaintance, retreating to his unsocial lair if he hear but the faintest 
flutter of a friend’s wings? This last barbarian is more especially the 
representative of a bachelor; his shy odd seclusion, his nervous pecu- 
liarities, his dress, his pride, his gravity, and even his hypochondriasm, 
all point him out as the fittest animal emblem of single blessedness ; 
besides, he is asad ugly dog, and this completes the parallel. I speak 
from feeling, for alas! however reluctant the confession, I am a bache- 
lor myself. I am one of that unhappy class—a he-spinster—who go 
partners in situation with the pike, the hyzna, and the vulture. More- 
over, I have attained that age when a man’s mind being unalterably 
fixed, if he possess any oddities in dress, habit or disposition, they are 
sure to stick like burrs to him throughout life. It may—indeed it must 
—be this shy reserve of manner that has hitherto kept me a bachelor, 
for I have made no less than three separate offers to as many women, 
and been as often refused. My first (to enter without any further pre- 
. liminary on my confessions) was perpetrated at the exceedingly suscep- 
tible age of twenty-two, when, after dancing at a race-ball with a lady, 
Rol Re 
* See p. 474, vol. i. i 
