"But his elder brother, whom you are to see at supper, if you will
do us the favour of your company, was naturally impetuous, decisive,
and overbearing. He entered into life with those ardent
expectations by which young men are commonly deluded: in his
friendships, warm to excess; and equally violent in his dislikes.
He was on the brink of marriage with a young lady, when one of those
friends, for whose honour he would have pawned his life, made an
elopement with that very goddess, and left him besides deeply
engaged for sums which that good friend's extravagance had
squandered.
"The dreams he had formerly enjoyed were now changed for ideas of a
very different nature. He abjured all confidence in anything of
human form; sold his lands, which still produced him a very large
reversion, came to town, and immured himself, with a woman who had
been his nurse, in little better than a garret; and has ever since
applied his talents to the vilifying of his species. In one thing I
must take the liberty to instruct you; however different your
sentiments may be (and different they must be), you will suffer him
to go on without contradiction; otherwise, he will be silent
immediately, and we shall not get a word from him all the night
after.
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