AN OVERDOSE OF PROSPERITY 9 



vesce with. Full of repartee and humour, he was 

 eminently a social man, ' exchanging mind with you.' 

 That a man could be seriously praised at that epoch for 

 being f an ingenious, knowing, and very convivial man,' 

 shows how far those times were from our fashions. And 

 then fancy being convivial in Latin ! Elizabeth of 

 Falun need not have been anxious ; debarred from 

 feminine society, her lover was only jocular in Latin. 

 But amusement was not the club's primary object : 



Animal spirits are not common sense ; 

 They're good enough as an assistance, 

 But in themselves a poor existence. 



Humorous subjects do not fully fill the mind. c You 

 laugh and there's an end; but with sublime subjects 

 you muse and have high thoughts of God and resurrec- 

 tion, and retire to rest above the world. When you 

 are melancholy, if you take up Voltaire he is sure to 

 render you more so, strange as it may seem.' l It is a 

 matter of course that bubbles should be empty, and 

 emptiness cannot feed one. The philosophers of this club, 

 and particularly the young ones among them, magnified 

 their office, and rode on the youthful wings of science 

 full tilfc into other worlds. 



Linnaeus, the glib in Latin, his only outlet, is sure 

 to have been among the chief talkers. ' He saved the 

 time usually devoted by travellers to the acquisition of 

 languages, on principle, conceiving that as his stay 

 abroad was limited he should fall short of the end if he 

 1 Haydon, 



