This poor gentleman, who for some months past had been in a declining
way, hath at length paid his final tribute to nature.
To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humour of the thing, if
there was ever much in it, was pretty well exhausted; and a two years'
and a half existence has been a tolerable duration for a phantom.
I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard objected
to my late friend's writings was well-founded. Crude they are, I grant
you--a sort of unlicked, incondite things--villainously pranked in an
affected array of antique modes and phrases. They had not been _his_,
if they had been other than such; and better it is, that a writer
should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a
naturalness (so called) that should be strange to him. Egotistical
they have been pronounced by some who did not know, that what he tells
us, as of himself, was often true only (historically) of another; as
in a former Essay (to save many instances)--where under the _first
person_ (his favourite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn estate
of a country-boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and
connections--in direct opposition to his own early history. If it
be egotism to imply and twine with his own identity the griefs and
affections of another--making himself many, or reducing many unto
himself--then is the skilful novelist, who all along brings in his
hero, or heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all;
who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that narrowness. And how
shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, who doubtless, under
cover of passion uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless vent
to his most inward feelings, and expresses his own story modestly?
My late friend was in many respects a singular character. Those who
did not like him, hated him; and some, who once liked him, afterwards
became his bitterest haters. The truth is, he gave himself too little
concern what he uttered, and in whose presence. He observed neither
time nor place, and would e'en out with what came uppermost. With the
severe religionist he would pass for a free-thinker; while the other
faction set him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he
belied his sentiments. Few understood him; and I am not certain that
at all times he quite understood himself. He too much affected that
dangerous figure--irony. He sowed doubtful speeches, and reaped
plain, unequivocal hatred.--He would interrupt the gravest discussion
with some light jest; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrelevant in ears
that could understand it. Your long and much talkers hated him. The
informal habit of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of
speech, forbade him to be an orator; and he seemed determined that,
no one else should play that part when he was present. He was _petit_
and ordinary in his person and appearance. I have seen him sometimes
in what is called good company, but where he has been a stranger, sit
silent, and be suspected for an odd fellow; till some unlucky occasion
provoking it, he would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether
senseless perhaps, if rightly taken), which has stamped his character
for the evening. It was hit or miss with him; but nine times out of
ten, he contrived by this device to send away a whole company his
enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, and his
happiest _impromptus_ had the appearance of effort. He has been
accused of trying to be witty, when in truth he was but struggling
to give his poor thoughts articulation. He chose his companions for
some individuality of character which they manifested.--Hence, not
many persons of science, and few professed _literati_, were of his
councils. They were, for the most part, persons of an uncertain
fortune; and, as to such people commonly nothing is more obnoxious
than a gentleman of settled (though moderate) income, he passed with
most of them for a great miser. To my knowledge this was a mistake.
His _intimados_, to confess a truth, were in the world's eye a ragged
regiment. He found them floating on the surface of society; and the
colour, or something else, in the weed pleased him. The burrs stuck
to him--but they were gbod and loving burrs for all that. He never
greatly cared for the society of what are called good people. If any
of these were scandalised (and offences were sure to arise), he could
not help it. When he has been remonstrated with for not making more
concessions to the feelings of good people, he would retort by asking,
what one point did these good people ever concede to him? He was
temperate in his meals and diversions, but always kept a little on
this side of abstemiousness. Only in the use of the Indian weed he
might be thought a little excessive. He took it, he would say, as
a solvent of speech. Marry--as the friendly vapour ascended, how
his prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the ligaments, which
tongue-tied him, were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a statist!
I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that my old friend
is departed. His jests were beginning to grow obsolete, and his
stories to be found out. He felt the approaches of age; and while he
pretended to cling to life, you saw how slender were the ties left to
bind him. Discoursing with him latterly on this subject, he expressed
himself with a pettishness, which I thought unworthy of him. In our
walks about his suburban retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell,
some children belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed
and curtseyed, as he thought, in an especial manner to _him_. "They
take me for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He had
a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like anything
important and parochial. He thought that he approached nearer to that
stamp daily.. He had a general aversion from being treated like a
grave or respectable character, and kept a wary eye upon the advances
of age that should so entitle him. He herded always, while it was
possible, with people younger than himself. He did not conform to the
march of time, but was dragged along in the procession. His manners
lagged behind his years. He was too much of the boy-man. The _toga
virilis_ never sate gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions
of infancy had burnt into him, and he resented the impertinence of
manhood. These were weaknesses; but such as they were, they are a key
to explicate some of his writings.