There is a man among our actors here who may not be known to you.  It had become the habit of Sir Purcell Barren’s mind to behold himself as under a peculiarly malign shadow.  Very young men do the same, if they are much afflicted:  but this is because they are still boys enough to have the natural sense to be ashamed of ill-luck, even when they lack courage to struggle against it.  The reproaching of Providence by a man of full growth, comes to some extent from his meanness, and chiefly from his pride.  He remembers that the old Gods selected great heroes whom to persecute, and it is his compensation for material losses to conceive himself a distinguished mark for the Powers of air.  One who wraps himself in this delusion may have great qualities; he cannot be of a very contemptible nature; and in this place we will discriminate more closely than to call him fool.  Had Sir Purcell sunk or bent under the thong that pursued him, he might, after a little healthy moaning, have gone along as others do.  Who knows?—­though a much persecuted man, he might have become so degraded as to have looked forward with cheerfulness to his daily dinner; still despising, if he pleased, the soul that would invent a sauce.  I mean to say, he would, like the larger body of our sentimentalists, have acquiesced in our simple humanity, but without sacrificing a scruple to its grossness, or going arm-in-arm with it by any means.  Sir Purcell, however, never sank, and never bent.  He was invariably erect before men, and he did not console himself with a murmur in secret.  He had lived much alone; eating alone; thinking alone.  To complain of a father is, to a delicate mind, a delicate matter, and Sir Purcell was a gentleman to all about him.  His chief affliction in his youth, therefore, kept him dumb.  A gentleman to all about him, he unhappily forgot what was due to his own nature.  Must we not speak under pressure of a grief?  Little people should know that they must:  but then the primary task is to teach them that they are little people.  For, if they repress the outcry of a constant irritation, and the complaint against injustice, they lock up a feeding devil in their hearts, and they must have vast strength to crush him there.  Strength they must have to kill him, and freshness of spirit to live without him, after he has once entertained them with his most comforting discourses.  Have you listened to him, ever?  He does this:—­he plays to you your music (it is he who first teaches thousands that they have any music at all, so guess what a dear devil he is!); and when he has played this ravishing melody, he falls to upon a burlesque contrast of hurdy-gurdy and bag-pipe squeal and bellow and drone, which is meant for the music of the world.  How far sweeter was yours!  This charming devil Sir Purcell had nursed from childhood.