In spite of the general’s years, he evidently is a little vain of his person, and ambitious of conquests.  I have observed him on Sunday in church eyeing the country girls most suspiciously; and have seen him leer upon them with a downright amorous look, even when he has been gallanting Lady Lillycraft with great ceremony through the churchyard.  The general, in fact, is a veteran in the service of Cupid rather than of Mars, having signalised himself in all the garrison towns and country quarters, and seen service in every ball-room of England.  Not a celebrated beauty but he has laid siege to; and if his words may be taken in a matter wherein no man is apt to be over veracious, it is incredible what success he has had with the fair.  At present he is like a worn-out warrior, retired from service; but who still cocks his beaver with a military air, and talks stoutly of fighting whenever he comes within the smell of gunpowder.

I have heard him speak his mind very freely over his bottle, about the folly of the captain in taking a wife; as he thinks a young soldier should care for nothing but his “bottle and kind landlady.”  But, in fact, he says, the service on the continent has had a sad effect upon the young men; they have been ruined by light wines and French quadrilles.  “They’ve nothing,” he says, “of the spirit of the old service.  There are none of your six-bottle men left, that were the souls of a mess-dinner, and used to play the very deuce among the women.”

As to a bachelor, the general affirms that he is a free and easy man, with no baggage to take care of but his portmanteau; but, as Major Pendergast says, a married man, with his wife hanging on his arm, always puts him in mind of a chamber candlestick, with its extinguisher hitched to it.  I should not mind all this if it were merely confined to the general; but I fear he will be the ruin of my friend, Master Simon, who already begins to echo his heresies, and to talk in the style of a gentleman that has seen life, and lived upon the town.  Indeed, the general seems to have taken Master Simon in hand, and talks of showing him the lions when he comes to town, and of introducing him to a knot of choice spirits at the Mulligatawney Club; which, I understand, is composed of old nabobs, officers in the Company’s employ, and other “men of Ind,” that have seen service in the East, and returned home burnt out with curry and touched with the liver complaint.  They have their regular club, where they eat Mulligatawney soup, smoke the hookah, talk about Tippoo Saib, Seringapatam, and tiger-hunting; and are tediously agreeable in each other’s company.

[Illustration:  Conjugal Extinguisher]

[Illustration:  A Literary Antiquary]

A literary antiquary.

Printed bookes he contemnes, as a novelty of this latter age; but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly; especially if the cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a parenthesis between every syllable.

     Mico-COSMOGRAPHIE, 1628.