140 LIFE OF MYTTON. 



was not the property — no, not even the excrescence 

 — of his nature ; although, hi his practical jokes, I 

 admit he was rough, judging perhaps of other people's 

 corporeal feelings by his own/' 



I have said he was without excuse for ill-conduct 

 to his second wife, and must again say, zv/iy ? Not 

 merely was her beauty the weakest of her charms, and 

 her disposition and temper most amiable, but all who 

 knew her will join with me in saying, that if a wife 

 had been selected for IMr. Mytton with a view of 

 reclaiming him, and making him a domestic character 

 and a kind husband, she might have been the woman 

 fixed upon for the experiment. Like Terence's lover, 

 then, he should not only have sworn never to have 

 forsaken, or unkindly treated her, forasmuch as she 

 was the object of his choice, and had been with diffi- 

 ctilty obtauied; but there was that suitableness of 

 temper (the " co7ivenmiii nio7'es" of the poet), which 

 the one valued so highly, and the other had not, 

 perhaps, met with before. In short, there was every 



* How many times have I overheard such remarks as the fol- 

 lowing made on Mr. Mytton, by ladies, in my hearing, in distant 

 parts of England, and, indeed, now and then nearer home. " Oh, 

 he is a brute! he threw his wife's dog on the fire, and burnt 

 it alive. He tried to drown her, and wanted his hounds to eat 

 her alive." Pshaw ! 



