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We all applauded this sentiment, and the baronet looked embarrassed.

"As my support in this," continued Brownlow, "recollect the poor Jesse of Shenstone, once seemingly endowed with a taste for elegance, but lost with her innocence:

'If thro' the garden's flowery walks I stray,

And court the jasmins which could once allure,
Hope not to find delight in us, they say,

For we are spotless, Jesse, we are pure.'

Such self-condemnation, by destroying all cheerfulness, must at once destroy companionship, and render even beauty nugatory, perhaps repulsive; and thus, as far as even mere passion is concerned, your heroine has lost the power of creating it, and has dwindled either into a sorrowful mope, or a reckless, abandoned prostitute."

Instead of answering this forcible elucidation, Sir Harry filled his glass to the brim, and began beating the devil's tattoo under the table; and it was easy to see he was maintaining a contest with himself; but, rallying a little, he observed,

"This will, at least, not apply to a mistress's wit. That surely must remain intrinsically wit, whatever becomes of esteem."

66

"I am too fond of wit, as a mark of intellectual vigour," returned Mr. Brownlow, "to deny its power. But in this instance, what power? To please by filling the understanding, and giving

food for reflection? No; to amuse, perhaps to dazzle and excite, but only for a moment. The effect over, it revives not. Like a cordial, it warms and kindles, but has no nourishment; for we love not, because we do not respect the person of the speaker, and our esteem for intellect is so mingled with disesteem for character, that we do not remember what is spoken with pleasure."

"According to this," said Sir Harry, "you would not admire a beautiful passage in a play, should the actor be a bad moral character."

"I should endeavour," returned Brownlow, "to think only of the author, and forget the actor.”

"But how, if the author himself was a profligate? Would that derogate from the beauty of the language?"

"Not from its beauty in the abstract," returned Brownlow," but from my pleasure in it, certainly, unless I could succeed in forgetting the writer."

"What think you of Sterne or Rousseau ?” asked Sir Harry.

"As writers or men?" asked Brownlow.

"As both conjoined," replied Sir Harry.

"Much as I admire them as writers," said his opponent," if I think of their characters while reading, I answer distinctly and fairly, my pleasure is much diminished."

"What! at the pathos which surrounds Uncle

Toby and Le Fevre, or the wit that belongs to old Shandy!”

"Even so; unless, as it luckily often happens, that in this wit and pathos I am so beguiled, that I forget the bad husband and pretended lover of virtue."

"And Rousseau ?"

“There I am very clear; for in all his most eloquent touches, I never do, and never can, forget the hypocritical sophist-the avowed thief-the false witness-the deserter of his offspring. No, Melford, do not be led astray by the meteor of false sentiment, into the deceit of thinking evil good, or good evil; or that a woman's virtue does not heighten her charms, even to a man of pleasure. But, as to the meretricious attractions of the persons you have mentioned, be assured, what I always thought, and now know, is true; that one kind look, one soft pressure of the hand, from the wife of your heart, who loves you, and knows you love her, is worth a whole harem of purchased favours.”

This address seemed by no means thrown away upon him to whom it was directed, for he not only shewed signs of being beat, but of inward distress, for which, when I thought of what had caused this change in his character, I heartily pitied him.

Nor was it lost upon any

of us,

least of all upon

myself; for I conceived both liking and respect for

Brownlow, who did honour to that undefinable character, a man of fashion; and I was glad, by Granville's particular introduction to him, to add so worthily to the list of my select acquaintance.

Having outstaid the company, Granville gave me the following account of Brownlow :

"He is a man of fortune," said he, "good family, and of the best monde; or, as Shakspeare would say, ' of great admittance.' He has been as much what is called a man of pleasure, as a pure taste and fine mind would permit him to be, so as to have acquired much knowledge of the ways, perhaps of the corruptions of society, without being corrupted himself. His talents for pure and good criticism threw him at one time a good deal into the theatrical world, where his judgment was much respected, and his notice courted by the women as much as the men; and hence Melford's allusions. But, if not his virtue, his taste, in regard to the sex, of which you saw a good specimen, kept him pure in those opinions which he so well enforced; and in this he was the more lucky, for, previous to his present happiness in marriage with a woman of great beauty and merit, he was a warm and ill-used lover."

"Ha!" cried I; 66 was such a man ill-used? Disappointed, perhaps ?"

"Downright jilted."

"You amaze me!”

"I thought I should; and I am not sorry that you have seen him thus flourishing and happy, because I had him often in my mind when I told you that a man might love to distraction, and yet recover; nay, as in this gentleman's instance, rejoice in his failure in one place, for his far superior happiness in another."

"This must be an interesting history," said I.

"It is; but not on account of any particular adventures-any romance-but merely from the completeness of his recovery, and his achievement afterwards of the most perfect felicity, from a state of seemingly the most torturing desolation."

This excited me more and more, and I told Granville he was too slow in his narration.

"You will be more impatient as we go on," said he, "for the love between him and his first mistress commenced when he was a youth and she a girl."

"Good. But pray go on."

"Her father, a country gentleman, was one of his guardians; he sometimes passed a vacation from college with them, and the woods and fields, the primroses and nightingales, produced their usual effect; in short, they fell violently in love with each other, though Elizabeth felt the indications of it first, and so ingenuously confessed it, that it operated most with him in producing the passion he felt on his part. As we were schoolfellows

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