assembled round his couch listened with respectful grief to the funeral oration of their dying emperor. 'Friends and fellow-soldiers, the seasonable period of my departure is now arrived, and I discharge with the cheerfulness of a ready debtor the demands of nature. I have learned from philosophy how much the soul is more excellent than the body; and that the separation of the nobler substance should be the subject of joy rather than of affliction. I have learned from religion that an early death has often been the reward of piety; and I accept as a favour of the gods the mortal stroke that secures me from the danger of disgracing a character which has hitherto been supported by virtue and fortitude. I die without remorse as I have lived without guilt. I am pleased to reflect on the innocence of my private life; and I can affirm with confidence that the supreme authority, that emanation of the Divine Power, has been preserved in my hands pure and immaculate. Detesting the corrupt and destructive maxims of despotism, I have considered the happiness of the people as the end of government. Submitting my actions to the laws of prudence, of justice, and of moderation, I have trusted the event to the care of providence. Peace was the object of my counsels, as long as peace was consistent with the public welfare; but when the imperious voice of my country summoned me to arms, I exposed my person to the dangers of war, with the clear fore-knowledge (which I had acquired from the art of divination) that I was destined to fall by the sword. I now offer my tribute of gratitude to the Eternal Being who has not suffered me to perish by the cruelty of a tyrant, by the secret dagger of conspiracy, or by the slow tortures of lingering disease. He has given me in the midst of an honourable career a splendid and glorious departure from this world; and I hold it equally absurd, equally base, to solicit or to decline the stroke of fate.-Thus much I have attempted to say; but my strength fails me, and I feel the approach of death. I shall cautiously refrain from any word that may tend to influence your suffrages in the election of an emperor. My choice might be imprudent or injudicious; and if it should not be ratified by the consent of the army, it might be fatal to the person whom I should recommend. I shall only, as a good citizen, express my hopes that the Romans may be blessed with the government of a virtuous sovereign.' After this discourse, which Julian pronounced in a firm and gentle tone of voice, he distributed by a military testament the remains of his private fortune; and making some inquiry why Anatolius was not present, he understood from the answer of Sallust that Anatolius was killed, and bewailed with amiable inconsistency the loss of his friend. At the same time he reproved the immoderate grief of the spectators, and conjured them not to disgrace by unmanly tears the fate of a prince who in a few moments would be united with heaven and with the stars. The spectators were silent; and Julian entered into a metaphysical argument with the philosophers Priscus and Maximus on the nature of the soul. The efforts which he made, of mind as well as body, most probably hastened his death. His wound began to bleed with fresh violence: his respiration was embarrassed by the swelling of the veins he called for a draught of cold water, and, as soon as he had drank it, expired without pain, about the hour of midnight. Such was the end of that extraordinary man, in the thirty

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second year of his age, after a reign of one year and about eight months from the death of Constantius. In his last moments he displayed, perhaps with some ostentation, the love of virtue and of fame which had been the ruling passions of his life.

(From The Decline and Fall, Chap. xxiv.)

From the 'Autobiography.'

Wherever the distinction of birth is allowed to form a superior order in the state, education and example should always, and will often, produce among them a dignity of sentiment and propriety of conduct, which is guarded from dishonour by their own and the public esteem. If we read of some illustrious line so ancient that it has no beginning, so worthy that it ought to have no end, we sympathize in its various fortunes; nor can we blame the generous enthusiasm, or even the harmless vanity, of those who are allied to the honours of its name. For my own part, could I draw my pedigree from a general, a statesman, or a celebrated author, I should study their lives with the diligence of filial love. In the investigation of past events, our curiosity is stimulated by the immediate or indirect reference to ourselves; but in the estimate of honour we should learn to value the gifts of Nature above those of Fortune; to esteem in our ancestors the qualities that best promote the interests of society; and to pronounce the descendant of a king less truly noble than the offspring of a man of genius, whose writings will instruct or delight the latest posterity. The family of Confucius is, in my opinion, the most illustrious in the world. After a painful ascent of eight or ten centuries, our barons and princes of Europe are lost in the darkness of the middle ages; but, in the vast equality of the empire of China, the posterity of Confucius have maintained above two thousand two hundred years their peaceful honours and perpetual succession. The chief of the family is still revered by the sovereign and the people as the lively image of the wisest of mankind. The nobility of the Spencers has been illustrated and enriched by the trophies of Marlborough; but I exhort them to con sider the Fairy Queen as the most precious jewel of their coronet. Our immortal Fielding was of the younger branch of the Earls of Denbigh, who draw their origin from the Counts of Habsburg, the lineal descendants of Eltrico, in the seventh century, Duke of Alsace [an error; see page 347, note]. Far different have been the fortunes of the English and German divisions of the family of Habsburg: the former, the knights and sheriffs of Leicestershire, have slowly risen to the dignity of a peerage; the latter, the Emperors of Germany and Kings of Spain, have threatened the liberty of the old, and invaded the treasures of the new world. The successors of Charles the Fifth may disdain their brethren of England; but the romance of Tom Jones, that exquisite picture of human manners, will outlive the palace of the Escurial and the imperial eagle of the house of Austria.

That these sentiments are just, or at least natural, I am the more inclined to believe, as I am not myself interested in the cause; for I can derive from my ancestors neither glory nor shame. Yet a sincere and simple narrative of my own life may amuse some of my leisure hours; but it will subject me, and perhaps with justice, to the imputation of vanity. I may judge, however,

from the experience both of past and of the present times, that the public are always curious to know the men who have left behind them any image of their minds: the most scanty accounts of such men are compiled with diligence and perused with eagerness; and the student of every class may derive a lesson or an example from the lives most similar to his own. My name may hereafter be placed among the thousand articles of a Biographia Britannica; and I must be conscious that no one is so well qualified as myself to describe the series of my thoughts and actions. The authority of my masters, of the grave Thuanus and the philosophic Hume, might be sufficient to justify my design; but it would not be difficult to produce a long list of ancients and moderns who in various forms have exhibited their own portraits. Such portraits are often the most interesting, and sometimes the only interesting parts of their writings; and if they be sincere, we seldom complain of the minuteness or prolixity of these personal memorials. The lives of the younger Pliny, of Petrarch, and of Erasmus are expressed in the epistles which they themselves have given to the world. The essays of Montaigne and Sir William Temple bring us home to the houses and bosoms of the authors: we smile without contempt at the headstrong passions of Benvenuto Cellini and the gay follies of Colley Cibber. The confessions of St Austin and Rousseau disclose the secrets of the human heart: the commentaries of the learned Huet have survived his evangelical demonstration; and the memoirs of Goldoni are more truly dramatic than his Italian comedies. The heretic and the churchman are strongly marked in the characters and fortunes of Whiston and Bishop Newton; and even the dulness of Michael de Marolles and Anthony Wood acquires some value from the faithful representation of men and manners.

That

I am equal or superior to some of these, the effects of modesty or affectation cannot force me to dissemble.

Lord Sheffield collected Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works (2 vols. 1796; enlarged ed. 5 vols. 1814). The Decline and Fall had the honour of being bowdlerised by the original Mr Bowdler in his last years, and was published (1826) after his death, 'with the careful omission of all passages of an irreligious or immoral tendency.' Sir W. Smith's edition of the Decline and Fall (8 vols. 1854-55) contains the notes of Guizot and Milman; a magistral edition, in 7 vols., edited by Mr J. B. Bury, was published in 1896-1900. A German translation in 1805-7 anticipated the French one, and there was a new one by Sporschil (4th ed. 1862). There have also been two German translations (1796 and 1801) of the Autobiography. There are Italian, Magyar, and modern Greek translations of the Decline. In 1897 another Lord Sheffield published the six versions of the Autobiography, from which Miss Holroyd pieced together the text till then accepted; Mr Birkbeck Hill gave us another edition in 1901; and two volumes of the letters were edited by Professor Prothero. See the monograph by J. C. Morison (1878), Frederic Harrison's address at the Gibbon Commemoration (1895), Sainte-Beuve's two essays in the eighth volume of the Causeries du Lundi, and The Girlhood of Maria Josepha Holroyd (1896).

Thomas Paine was for a century and more the most abhorred name in England, and was almost universally cited by way of assumed contempt as 'Tom Paine.' This most formidable of deists and Radicals-he was called atheist, and held to be the most destructive of revolutionaries -was born at Thetford in Norfolk on 29th January 1737, the son of a Quaker staymaker. The son, surely the most un-friendly of those descended from the Friends, expressly testifies

that he was much influenced by Quaker viewsas does the revolutionary novelist Robert Bage, who, though 'barely a Christian,' retained a strong affection for the Quaker faith in which he was brought up. Tom Paine was by turns staymaker and marine, schoolmaster, exciseman, and tobacconist. His first publication was a tract in aid of the excisemen's agitation for increase of wages in 1772. He had married twice, losing his first wife, and soon separating from the second, when in 1774, with introductions from Franklin, he sailed for Philadelphia. On 10th January 1776 appeared his pamphlet Common Sense, which argued simply but strongly for complete independence, and which, in Washington's words, 'worked a powerful change in the minds of many men.' His Crisis, a twelvemonth later, gave the battle-cry, 'These are the times that try men's souls,' for the Americans' first victory at Trenton, where Paine himself was serving as a private; and Congress rewarded him with the post of Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs. He wrote fifteen Crises in all before 1783, to keep up the hearts of the rebels. He lost his post in 1779 for polemically discussing-and so divulging-State secrets about French supplies in a Pennsylvania paper, but was appointed clerk of the Pennsylvania legislature. In 1781 he was secretary of a mission to France, which returned with 2,500,000 livres and military stores; and soon after he received a public salary, and from the State of New York a gift of the confiscated farm of New Rochelle.

In 1787 he returned, by way of Paris, to England, where in 1791-92 he published The Rights of Man, most famous of all the replies to Burke's Reflections upon the French Revolution. The work, of which a million and a half copies were sold in England alone, involved many in heavy penalties; Thomas Muir, for instance, for circulating it got fourteen years' transportation. Paine, however, had slipped off to Paris, having been elected by the department of Pas-de-Calais its deputy to the National Convention. Here he voted with the Girondists, and at Louis XVI.'s trial he ‘alone,' says Madame de Staël, 'proposed what would have done France honour-the offer to the king of an asylum in America.' He thereby offended the Robespierre faction, and in 1794 was thrown into prison--possibly by the procurement of the American Minister, Gouverneur Morris, who disliked the French Revolution and the alliance between the new republics-just before his arrest having written Part I. of The Age of Reason, against atheism and against Christianity, and in favour of deism. Part II. appeared in 1795, and a portion of Part III. in 1807. The book alienated most of his old friends; and it was not till after an imprisonment of eleven months that he was released at the request of Monroe, the new American Minister, and restored to his seat in the Convention. But he soon became disgusted with French politics, and occupied himself chiefly with the study of

finance; and, irate at the long acquiescence of the American Government in his imprisonment, he violently attacked Washington as a commander and as a statesman. In 1802 he returned to America, refusing to go by a ship placed at his service by President Jefferson. In America he was welcomed by his own party, but hooted by orthodox mobs and tabooed by society. He was embarrassed in finances, constantly embroiled in controversy theological and political, and seems to have taken to drinking-though doubtless the stories about his intemperance were greatly exaggerated. He died at New York 8th June 1809. In 1819 his bones were removed by Cobbett (q.v.) from New Rochelle to England; they were seized as part of the property of Cobbett's son, a bankrupt, in 1836; their whereabouts since 1844 is unknown.

Replies to Paine's theological views were much fiercer than those against his political doctrinesGilbert Wakefield's and Bishop Watson's being famous. As an apologist for the American rebels, 'Tom' was hated by patriotic Englishmen; his Rights of Man was the text-book of all the extreme Radicals and sympathisers with the French Revolution - another ground for hatred; and his deism was hateful to many who shared his Radicalism. He was sincere and courageous, but vain and bigoted; he held that his pen had done as much for the United States as Washington's sword; he thought his opponents knaves and fools; and his attacks on revelation are rather shrewd and bold than scholarly or profound. 'Paine's ignorance,' says Mr Leslie Stephen, 'was vast and his language brutal; but he had the gift of a true demagogue—the power of wielding a fine vigorous English.' The two following selections are from the Rights of Man.

Order due to Society, not to Government. Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the parts of a civilised community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together. The land-holder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation prospers by the aid which each receives from the other and from the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns and forms their law; and the laws which common usage ordains have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government.

To understand the nature and quantity of government proper for man, it is necessary to attend to his character. As Nature created him for social life, she fitted him for the station she intended. In all cases she made his natural wants greater than his individual powers. No one man is capable, without the aid of society, of supply

ing his own wants; and those wants acting upon every individual, impel the whole of them into society, 25 naturally as gravitation acts to a center.

But she has gone further. She has not only forced man into society by a diversity of wants which the reciprocal aid of each other can supply, but she has implanted in him a system of social affections, which, though not necessary to his existence, are essential to his happiness. There is no period in life when this love for society ceases to act. It begins and ends with our being.

If we examine with attention into the composition and constitution of man, the diversity of his wants, and the diversity of talents in different men for reciprocally accommodating the wants of each other, his propensity to society, and consequently to preserve the advantages resulting from it, we shall easily discover that a great part of what is called government is mere imposition.

Government is no farther necessary than to supply the few cases to which society and civilization are not conveniently competent; and instances are not wanting to shew that everything which government can usefully add thereto has been performed by the common consent of society, without government.

For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American war, and to a longer period in several of the American States, there were no established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished, and the country was too much occupied in defence to employ its attention in establishing new governments: yet during this interval order and harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe. There is a natural aptness in man, and more so in society, because it embraces a greater variety of abilities and resource, to accommodate itself to whatever situation it is in. The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.

So far is it from being true, as has been pretended, that the abolition of any formal government is the dissolution of society, that it acts by a contrary impulse, and brings the latter the closer together. All that part of its organization which it had committed to its government devolves again upon itself, and acts through its medium. When men, as well from natural instinct as from reciprocal benefits, have habituated themselves to social and civilized life, there is always enough of its principles in practice to carry them through any changes they may find necessary or convenient to make in their government. In short, man is so naturally a creature of society that it is almost impossible to put him out of it.

Formal government makes but a small part of civilized life; and when even the best that human wisdom can devise is established, it is a thing more in name and idea than in fact. It is to the great and fundamental principles of society and civilization to the common usage universally consented to, and mutually and reciprocally maintained-to the unceasing circulation of interest, which, passing through its million channels, invigorates the whole mass of civilized man-it is to these things, infinitely more than to anything which even the best instituted government can perform, that the safety and prosperity of the individual and of the whole depends.

The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs and govern itself; but so contrary is the

practice of old governments to the reason of the case, that the expences of them increase in the proportion they ought to diminish. It is but few general laws that civilized life requires, and those of such common usefulness, that whether they are enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly the same. If we consider what the principles are that first condense men into society, and what the motives that regulate their mutual intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by the time we arrive at what is called government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed by the natural operation of the parts upon each other.

The Landed Interest.

It is difficult to discover what is meant by the landed interest, if it does not mean a combination of aristocratical land-holders opposing their own pecuniary interest to that of the farmer and every branch of trade, commerce, and manufacture. In all other respects it is the only interest that needs no partial protection. It enjoys the general protection of the world. Every individual, high or low, is interested in the fruits of the earth; men, women, and children, of all ages and degrees, will turn out to assist the farmer, rather than a harvest should not be got in; and they will not act thus by any other property. It is the only one for which the common prayer of mankind is put up, and the only one that can never fail from the want of means. It is the interest, not of the policy, but of the existence of man, and when it ceases, he must cease to be. No other interest in a nation stands on the same united support. Commerce, manufactures, arts, sciences, and everything else, compared with this, are supported but in parts. Their prosperity or their decay has not the same universal influence. When the valleys laugh and sing, it is not the farmer only, but all creation that rejoices. It is a prosperity that excludes all envy; and this cannot be said of anything else.

The completest editions of Paine's works are those by Mendum (3 vols. Boston, 1850), and Mr Moncure D. Conway (4 vols. London, 1895-96); of his numerous biographies may be mentioned those by 'Francis Oldys' (i.e. George Chalmers, 1791), Cheetham (1809), Rickman (1814), Sherwin (1819), Vale (1841), Blanchard (1860), and especially that by Moncure D. Conway (2 vols. 1892). See also Leslie Stephen's History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1880), and Alger's Englishmen in the French Revolution (1889).

George Colman 'the Elder' (1732-94), playwright and manager, was the son of the English envoy at Florence, was educated at Westminster and Oxford, and called to the Bar in 1755. His theatrical proclivities were much hampered by his mother's aristocratic connections, the Earl of Bath and General Pulteney; but in 1760 his first piece, Polly Honeycombe, was produced at Drury Lane with great success; next year came The Jealous Wife, and in 1766 The Clandestine Marriage, written in conjunction with Garrick. In 1767 he purchased, with three others, Covent Garden Theatre, and held the office of manager for seven years, when he sold his share. During his management he had quarrels with his partners, and with Garrick and Macklin; a pamphlet war and a succession of lawsuits followed. In 1776 he purchased the Haymarket Theatre from Foote. He wrote many minor comedies, produced

'acting' versions of plays by Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Terence, of Milton's Comus, and of some French pieces. His own translation of Terence was received with enthusiasm, and so was his translation, with notes, of Horace's De Arte Poetica. He wrote essays, edited Beaumont and Fletcher's works, and Ben Jonson's, and was author of some poems, criticisms, and other prose pieces (published in 3 vols. 1787). Many of his plays are not merely clever, but brilliant; and though a collection of his Dramatic Works was published in four volumes in 1777, many of his things have never been printed. Peake's Memoirs of the Colman Family (1841) and his own son's Random Recollections (1830) contain biographical materials; and Some Particulars of the Life of the Late George Colman (1795) is largely autobiographical. In 1785 he had a stroke of paralysis, and he died in confinement. His son, George Colman 'the Younger,' was perhaps even more famous on the same lines well into the next century.

Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), novelist and essayist, was the son of the Bishop of Clonfert and great-grandson of Dr Richard Cumberland (see page 47), and was born in the lodge of Trinity College, Cambridge. His mother was Joanna, daughter of Dr Bentley, erroneously said to be the Phoebe of Byrom's pastoral (see page 279); and he inherited not a little of his grandfather's combative temper. From Bury St Edmunds and Westminster, where he was contemporary with Cowper, Churchill, and Warren Hastings, he passed to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was a Fellow at twenty. Becoming private secretary to Lord Halifax, he gave up his intention of taking orders. Through the influence of his patron, he was made Crown-agent for the province of Nova Scotia; and he was afterwards appointed, by Lord George Germain, secretary to the Board of Trade. His popularity as a writer of plays introduced him to all the literary and distinguished society of his day. In 1780 he was employed on a secret mission to Spain, in order to endeavour to detach that country from the hostile confederacy against England; but after a twelvemonth at Madrid he was recalled, and payment of his drafts refused. A sum of £5000 was due to him; but as Cumberland had failed in the negotiation, and had exceeded his commission through excess of zeal, the Minister refused to reimburse him. The unfortunate dramatist-diplomatist was accordingly compelled to sell his paternal estate and retire into private life. He took up his abode at Tunbridge, and there poured forth farces, comedies, tragedies, pamphlets, essays, and poems, among them two epics, Calvary and The Exodiad, the latter written in conjunction with Sir James Bland Burgess. None of these was above mediocrity: the vivifying power of genius was shown only in two or three of his plays. In the Memoirs of his Own Life

Cumberland is graphic and entertaining, but too many of his anecdotes of contemporaries are imperfectly authenticated. His fame rests on two or three of his plays, which include The West Indian (1771) his best, produced with much success by Garrick; The Brothers (1769); The Fashionable Lover (1772); The Jew; and The Wheel of Fortune. One would have thought that the unquestionable | dramatic gift manifested in the best plays, his knowledge of life and manners at home and abroad, would have made Cumberland a notable novelist. But it was not so. His first novel, Arundel (1789), was hurriedly composed; but the scene being partly in college and at court, and dealing with high life, the author drew upon his recollections, and painted vigorously what he had felt and witnessed. His second work, Henry (1795), carefully elaborated in imitation of Fielding, was less happy; Cumberland was not at home in the humbler walks of life, and his portraits are grossly overcharged. The character of Ezekiel Dow, a Methodist preacher, was praised by Sir Walter Scott as exquisite and just. But the resemblance to Fielding's Parson Adams is too marked, and the Methodistic elements are less convincing than the learned simplicity and bonhomie of the worthy parson. And as Scott said: 'He had a peculiar taste in love-affairs, which induced him to reverse the natural and usual practice of courtship, and to throw upon the softer sex the task of wooing, which is more gracefully, as well as naturally, the province of the man.' In these wooing scenes there is inevitably a lack of delicacy; Scott, who ranked his comedies next to Sheridan's, thought his romances indecent. His third novel, John de Lancaster, was the inferior work of his advanced years. In the Retaliation Goldsmith somewhat hyperbolically praised him as

The Terence of England, the mender of hearts -surely one of the finest compliments ever paid by one author to another, were it not obviously satirical, though not perhaps unkindly meant. Actually Goldsmith does not seem to have been drawn to him, thought he had over-refined comedy, and set himself to succeed by avoiding his rival's defect; while Sheridan made the world laugh at him as 'Sir Fretful Plagiary.' The West Indian is a comedy of intrigue, and its scheme of honour and morals is by no means unexceptionable. The hero, arriving rich and libertine from Jamaica, falls in love with a beautiful girl, addresses her in the street, pursues her to her lodging, and importunes her to a dishonourable alliance. Some trouble ensues, but so soon as the hero has had an opportunity of explaining in a dignified manner that a disreputable landlady had hinted to him that the lady was not the sister but the mistress of the secondary hero, the mistake is at once seen to be natural and venial; the lady, her brother and father, and friends on both sides regard the principal hero's conduct on the whole as generous and

admirable in a high degree, and the insulted lady accepts, not merely without hesitation but with enthusiasm, his formal suit for her hand.

Mr Johnson and Tea-Drinking.

At the tea-table he made considerable demands upon his favourite beverage; and I remember when Sir Joshua Reynolds at my house reminded him that he had drunk eleven cups, he replied: "Sir, I did not count your glasses of wine; why should you number up my cups of tea?' And then, laughing in perfect good humour, he added: 'Sir, I should have released the lady from any further trouble if it had not been for your remark; but you have reminded me that I want one of the dozen, and I must request Mrs Cumberland to round up my number.' When he saw the readiness and complacency with which my wife obeyed his call, he turned a kind and cheerful look on her, and said: 'Madam, I must tell you for your comfort you have escaped much better than a certain lady did a while ago, upon whose patience I intruded greatly more than I have done on yours; but the lady asked me for no other purpose than to make a zany of me, and set me gabbling to a parcel of people I knew nothing of; so, madam, I had my revenge on her, for I swallowed five-and-twenty cups of her tea, and did not treat her with as many words.' (From the Memoirs.)

From 'The West Indian,'

Mrs Fulmer. Why, how you sit, musing and moping, sighing and desponding! I'm ashamed of you, Mr Fulmer is this the country you described to me, a second Eldorado, rivers of gold and rocks of diamonds? You found me in a pretty snug retir'd way of life at Boulogne, out of the noise and bustle of the world, and wholly at my ease; you, indeed, was upon the wing, with a fiery persecution at your back: but, like a true son of Loyola, you had then a thousand ingenious devices to repair your fortune; and this your native country was to be the scene of your performances: fool that I was, to be inveigled into it by you: . . . for what have we got, whom have we gull'd but ourselves? which of all your trains has taken fire? even this poor expedient of your bookseller's shop seems abandoned; for if a chance customer drops in, who is there, pray, to help him to what he wants?

Fulmer. Patty, you know it is not upon slight grounds that I despair; there had us'd to be a livelihood to be pick'd up in this country, both for the honest and dishonest I have tried each walk, and am likely to starve at last there is not a point to which the wit and faculty of man can turn, that I have not set mine to; but in vain, I am beat through every quarter of the compass.

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Mrs Ful. Ah! common efforts all: strike me a masterstroke, Mr Fulmer, if you wish to make any figure in this country.

Ful. But where, how, and what? I have bluster'd for prerogative; I have bellowed for freedom; I have offer'd to serve my country; I have engaged to betray it-a master-stroke, truly; why, I have talked treason, writ treason, and if a man can't live by that he can live by nothing. Here I set up as a bookseller, why men left off reading; and if I was to turn butcher, I believe o' my conscience they'd leave off eating.

Mrs Ful. Why, there now's your lodger, old Captain Dudley, as he calls himself; there's no flint without fire;