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.