hand, and he had a particular aversion to chaffers. This kindled him again.

66

66

This creature, too," said he, in a tone of despair, “is, like everything else, leagued against me;" and he lifted up his other hand to crush it. 66 Yet why?" cried he, and stopped. Poor wretch! he has little of life; why should I shorten it? He is not like me, sour, impatient, mindless of my Maker's benefits. May I be worse than I am, if I hurt him;" and he shook him off among the flowers that decorated the windows.

This led me to suppose there had been seeds of good-nature, if I might not say good temper, in him; but sadly, indeed, were they stifled; and I bore witness to his own apothegm, that no irritable man could be happy.

SECTION XXII.

"There is a sickness

Which puts some of us in distemper, but

I cannot name the disease."

WINTER'S TALE.

CANDIDE.

Quel grand homme! Rien ne peut lui plaire."

How poor Yawn became so irritable, if ever he had been otherwise, was now a curious question; for, from all I could gather from many at Bath who knew his history, though much respected for integrity and abilities, and therefore with many friends, he had few companions. Of this he was himself sensible, and that very sense of it only irritated him more. Blame was laid upon his health,

which was certainly not good, but made infinitely worse by his discontents. I wondered at myself, therefore, in persevering to cultivate him; but his conversation when in tolerable temper, and the confidence that seemed, as he said, due to me for being the only person who, for a long time, could

bear with him, gave me hopes that I might, in the end, find out the real cause of his malady. My patience was rewarded, if not by discovering the cause, yet, at least, by a short history of its rise and progress. This he once, in a favourable interval, gave me from his own mouth.

66

Yes!" said he, body calls me, blasé; for every source I ever had of interest or pleasure is dried up. I have been so regularly disappointed in everything I undertook, that I can undertake no more. The elasticity of mind which I believe I once had, is gone, I fear, for ever; and my body being bloated, as I feel, with constitutional ill-health, my existence is a burthen to me."

"I confess I am what every

"Yet you seem," said I, " to know the world so well, that I should have hoped some, if not many things, would have rewarded you for living in it. With not half your experience, I should be sorry to have met with universal disappointment."

"Your feelings," said he, " though so much younger, are perhaps not so acute as those with which, for my sins, I have been tormented. Oh! of all human evils, (and there are enough of them,) guard me from too much sensibility."

"Yet sensibility," said I, " is one of the greatest sources of delight.'

"And also," returned he, "of misery. Mine I

pushed to the utmost in everything, till it became too attenuated to sustain itself, and it broke under me from very weakness, Why was I so born? Why not with feelings blunted like other and happier people?-those porters, for example, whom we see merry under their burthens, because sure to be relieved from them, and then all the jollier for the exertion. It is nothing to them where they go, or whom they carry."

"And are we not at liberty," said I, "to imitate these porters?"

"No! The porter and the gentleman are two different beings, and unfortunately I was a gentleman. Had I had to work for my bread, or known less than I do, I might have been happier."

"This," said I," is surely not the creed of men of education. Yours, for example, must have given you a taste for everything liberal: conversation, the Arts, the Court, the Muses, the song, and the dance; the last, if only as exhibited at that classical spectacle, the Opera."

"Alas! Sir," said he, " how I wish my faculties had been as blunted as those that can find pleasure in any of the classifications you have mentioned. As to conversation, what is it but an effort for wit, which perhaps will not come, unless prepared for, and then its flavour is lost."

"But, suppose a sober discussion."

"What over a bottle, which inflames argument into temporary dislike, and sometimes lasting hatred!"

"Worse and worse!—all personal rancour, and

no truth."

"Well, then, elegant literature and taste!"

"Yes! to let in the quarrels of authors, and irritable wasps, their abettors in point of taste; a subject which immediately becomes personal, and therefore offensive."

"But surely it is the character of literary merit to create mutual respect!"

"Yes!" said he. "Witness the struggles in the literary club,-Johnson! Beauclerk! Goldsmith! Witness Swift and Prior*! Be assured, Sir, the soul of conversational pleasure is good breeding, and to this everything personal is an enemy.”

* I suppose Yawn alludes to Swift's. journal to Stella, i. 62. "Prior came in after dinner, and the secretary said, 'The best thing I ever read is not yours, but Dr. Swift's on Vanburgh.' Prior was damped, till I stuffed him with two or three compliments."

Again: "Mr. Harley made me read a paper of verses of Prior. I read them plain, without any fine manner, and Prior swore I never should read any of his again; but he would be revenged, and read some of mine as bad.”—i. 105.