"
"I should be glad to see this medley," said I. "You shall see it
now," answered the curate, "for I always take it along with me a-
shooting." "How came it so torn?" "'Tis excellent wadding," said
the curate.--This was a plea of expediency I was not in a condition
to answer; for I had actually in my pocket great part of an edition
of one of the German Illustrissimi, for the very same purpose. We
exchanged books; and by that means (for the curate was a strenuous
logician) we probably saved both.
When I returned to town, I had leisure to peruse the acquisition I
had made: I found it a bundle of little episodes, put together
without art, and of no importance on the whole, with something of
nature, and little else in them. I was a good deal affected with
some very trifling passages in it; and had the name of Marmontel, or
a Richardson, been on the title-page--'tis odds that I should have
wept: But
One is ashamed to be pleased with the works of one knows not whom.
CHAPTER XI {16}--ON BASHFULNESS.--A CHARACTER.--HIS OPINION ON THAT
SUBJECT
There is some rust about every man at the beginning; though in some
nations (among the French for instance) the ideas of the
inhabitants, from climate, or what other cause you will, are so
vivacious, so eternally on the wing, that they must, even in small
societies, have a frequent collision; the rust therefore will wear
off sooner: but in Britain it often goes with a man to his grave;
nay, he dares not even pen a hic jacet to speak out for him after
his death.
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