to him by his old master, the Jesuit, than which he
knew no other. Mr. Bridge, the tutor, made him
the object of clumsy jokes, in which he was fond of
indulging. The young man’s spirit was chafed,
and his vanity mortified; and he found himself, for
some time, as lonely in this place as ever he had
been at Castlewood, whither he longed to return.
His birth was a source of shame to him, and he fancied
a hundred slights and sneers from young and old, who,
no doubt, had treated him better had he met them himself
more frankly. And as he looks back, in calmer
days, upon this period of his life, which he thought
so unhappy, he can see that his own pride and vanity
caused no small part of the mortifications which he
attributed to other’s ill will. The world
deals good-naturedly with good-natured people, and
I never knew a sulky misanthropist who quarrelled
with it, but it was he, and not it, that was in the
wrong. Tom Tusher gave Harry plenty of good advice
on this subject, for Tom had both good sense and good
humor; but Mr. Harry chose to treat his senior with
a great deal of superfluous disdain and absurd scorn,
and would by no means part from his darling injuries,
in which, very likely, no man believed but himself.
As for honest Doctor Bridge, the tutor found, after
a few trials of wit with the pupil, that the young
man was an ugly subject for wit, and that the laugh
was often turned against him. This did not make
tutor and pupil any better friends; but had, so far,
an advantage for Esmond, that Mr. Bridge was induced
to leave him alone; and so long as he kept his chapels,
and did the college exercises required of him, Bridge
was content not to see Harry’s glum face in
his class, and to leave him to read and sulk for himself
in his own chamber.
A poem or two in Latin and English, which were pronounced
to have some merit, and a Latin oration, (for Mr.
Esmond could write that language better than pronounce
it,) got him a little reputation both with the authorities
of the University and amongst the young men, with whom
he began to pass for more than he was worth.
A few victories over their common enemy, Mr. Bridge,
made them incline towards him, and look upon him as
the champion of their order against the seniors.
Such of the lads as he took into his confidence found
him not so gloomy and haughty as his appearance led
them to believe; and Don Dismallo, as he was called,
became presently a person of some little importance
in his college, and was, as he believes, set down
by the seniors there as rather a dangerous character.
Don Dismallo was a staunch young Jacobite, like the
rest of his family; gave himself many absurd airs
of loyalty; used to invite young friends to Burgundy,
and give the King’s health on King James’s
birthday; wore black on the day of his abdication;
fasted on the anniversary of King William’s
coronation; and performed a thousand absurd antics,
of which he smiles now to think.