But Mr. Greville, the old friend and early patron of the Doctor, he
now never saw, save by accident; and rarely as that occurred, it was
oftener than could be wished; so querulous was that gentleman grown,
from ill-luck in his perilous pursuits; so irascible within, and so
supercilious without; assuming to all around him a sort of dignified
distance, that bordered, at least, upon universal disdain.
The world seemed completely in decadence with this fallen gentleman;
and the writhings of long suffocated mortification, from sinking his
fine spirits and sickening his gay hopes, began to engender a morbid
irritation, that was ready, upon every fancied provocation, to boil
into vehemence of passion, or burst into the bitterness of sarcastic
reproach.
This state of things had come upon him unconsciously; though to the
observations of his friends its advance had been glaringly evident.
It was not that he wanted, at large, foresight for events to be
rationally expected, or judgment to dictate how they should be met:
but his foresight, his sense of right, were all for his neighbours!
for himself—he had none. To all without he had a nearly microscopic
vision; to all within he was blind; as the eye sees every thing—but
itself.
“Experience,” Mr. Crisp was wont to say, “is rarely of any use
collaterally; it does not become efficient till it has personally been
bought. And it must be paid for, also,” he would energetically add, “to
be well remembered!”
But so torpid was the infatuation of self-security in Mr. Greville,
that pertinaciously he frequented the same seductive haunts, and
mechanically adhered to the same dangerous society, till the knowledge
of his errors and their mischief was forced upon him by his creditors.
Angered and disgusted, he then, in gloomy sullenness, retired from
public view; and lived a rambling, unsettled sort of life, as ill at
ease with his family as with the world, from the wounds he habitually
inflicted, and occasionally suffered, through the irritability of his
argumentative commerce.