“He is the elder of the two sons of a gentleman of considerable estate in the country.  Their father died when they were young:  both were remarkable at school for quickness of parts and extent of genius; this had been bred to no profession, because his father’s fortune, which descended to him, was thought sufficient to set him above it; the other was put apprentice to an eminent attorney.  In this the expectations of his friends were more consulted than his own inclination; for both his brother and he had feelings of that warm kind that could ill brook a study so dry as the law, especially in that department of it which was allotted to him.  But the difference of their tempers made the characteristical distinction between them.  The younger, from the gentleness of his nature, bore with patience a situation entirely discordant to his genius and disposition.  At times, indeed, his pride would suggest of how little importance those talents were which the partiality of his friends had often extolled:  they were now incumbrances in a walk of life where the dull and the ignorant passed him at every turn; his fancy and his feeling were invincible obstacles to eminence in a situation where his fancy had no room for exertion, and his feeling experienced perpetual disgust.  But these murmurings he never suffered to be heard; and that he might not offend the prudence of those who had been concerned in the choice of his profession, he continued to labour in it several years, till, by the death of a relation, he succeeded to an estate of a little better than 100 pounds a year, with which, and the small patrimony left him, he retired into the country, and made a love-match with a young lady of a similar temper to his own, with whom the sagacious world pitied him for finding happiness.

“But his elder brother, whom you are to see at supper, if you will do us the favour of your company, was naturally impetuous, decisive, and overbearing.  He entered into life with those ardent expectations by which young men are commonly deluded:  in his friendships, warm to excess; and equally violent in his dislikes.  He was on the brink of marriage with a young lady, when one of those friends, for whose honour he would have pawned his life, made an elopement with that very goddess, and left him besides deeply engaged for sums which that good friend’s extravagance had squandered.

“The dreams he had formerly enjoyed were now changed for ideas of a very different nature.  He abjured all confidence in anything of human form; sold his lands, which still produced him a very large reversion, came to town, and immured himself, with a woman who had been his nurse, in little better than a garret; and has ever since applied his talents to the vilifying of his species.  In one thing I must take the liberty to instruct you; however different your sentiments may be (and different they must be), you will suffer him to go on without contradiction; otherwise, he will be silent immediately, and we shall not get a word from him all the night after.”  Harley promised to remember this injunction, and accepted the invitation of his friend.