These follies caused many remonstrances on Tom Tusher’s part, who was always a friend to the powers that be, as Esmond was always in opposition to them.  Tom was a Whig, while Esmond was a Tory.  Tom never missed a lecture, and capped the proctor with the profoundest of bows.  No wonder he sighed over Harry’s insubordinate courses, and was angry when the others laughed at him.  But that Harry was known to have my Lord Viscount’s protection, Tom no doubt would have broken with him altogether.  But honest Tom never gave up a comrade as long as he was the friend of a great man.  This was not out of scheming on Tom’s part, but a natural inclination towards the great.  ’Twas no hypocrisy in him to flatter, but the bent of his mind, which was always perfectly good-humored, obliging, and servile.

Harry had very liberal allowances, for his dear mistress of Castlewood not only regularly supplied him, but the Dowager of Chelsey made her donation annual, and received Esmond at her house near London every Christmas; but, in spite of these benefactions, Esmond was constantly poor; whilst ’twas a wonder with how small a stipend from his father Tom Tusher contrived to make a good figure.  ’Tis true that Harry both spent, gave, and lent his money very freely, which Thomas never did.  I think he was like the famous Duke of Marlborough in this instance, who, getting a present of fifty pieces, when a young man, from some foolish woman who fell in love with his good looks, showed the money to Cadogan in a drawer scores of years after, where it had lain ever since he had sold his beardless honor to procure it.  I do not mean to say that Tom ever let out his good looks so profitably, for nature had not endowed him with any particular charms of person, and he ever was a pattern of moral behavior, losing no opportunity of giving the very best advice to his younger comrade; with which article, to do him justice, he parted very freely.  Not but that he was a merry fellow, too, in his way; he loved a joke, if by good fortune he understood it, and took his share generously of a bottle if another paid for it, and especially if there was a young lord in company to drink it.  In these cases there was not a harder drinker in the University than Mr. Tusher could be; and it was edifying to behold him, fresh shaved and with smug face, singing out “Amen!” at early chapel in the morning.  In his reading, poor Harry permitted himself to go a-gadding after all the Nine Muses, and so very likely had but little favor from any one of them; whereas Tom Tusher, who had no more turn for poetry than a ploughboy, nevertheless, by a dogged perseverance and obsequiousness in courting the divine Calliope, got himself a prize, and some credit in the University, and a fellowship at his college, as a reward for his scholarship.  In this time of Mr. Esmond’s life, he got the little reading which he ever could boast of, and passed a good part of his days greedily devouring all the books on which he could lay hand.  In this desultory way the works of most of the English, French, and Italian poets came under his eyes, and he had a smattering of the Spanish tongue likewise, besides the ancient languages, of which, at least of Latin, he was a tolerable master.