“His history!” said I.  “Nay, you may call it what you please,” said the curate; for indeed it is no more a history than it is a sermon.  The way I came by it was this:  some time ago, a grave, oddish kind of a man boarded at a farmer’s in this parish:  the country people called him The Ghost; and he was known by the slouch in his gait, and the length of his stride.  I was but little acquainted with him, for he never frequented any of the clubs hereabouts.  Yet for all he used to walk a-nights, he was as gentle as a lamb at times; for I have seen him playing at teetotum with the children, on the great stone at the door of our churchyard.

“Soon after I was made curate, he left the parish, and went nobody knows whither; and in his room was found a bundle of papers, which was brought to me by his landlord.  I began to read them, but I soon grew weary of the task; for, besides that the hand is intolerably bad, I could never find the author in one strain for two chapters together; and I don’t believe there’s a single syllogism from beginning to end.”

“I should be glad to see this medley,” said I.  “You shall see it now,” answered the curate, “for I always take it along with me a-shooting.”  “How came it so torn?” “’Tis excellent wadding,” said the curate.—­This was a plea of expediency I was not in a condition to answer; for I had actually in my pocket great part of an edition of one of the German Illustrissimi, for the very same purpose.  We exchanged books; and by that means (for the curate was a strenuous logician) we probably saved both.

When I returned to town, I had leisure to peruse the acquisition I had made:  I found it a bundle of little episodes, put together without art, and of no importance on the whole, with something of nature, and little else in them.  I was a good deal affected with some very trifling passages in it; and had the name of Marmontel, or a Richardson, been on the title-page—­’tis odds that I should have wept:  But

One is ashamed to be pleased with the works of one knows not whom.

CHAPTER XI {16}—­ON BASHFULNESS.—­A CHARACTER.—­HIS OPINION ON THAT SUBJECT

There is some rust about every man at the beginning; though in some nations (among the French for instance) the ideas of the inhabitants, from climate, or what other cause you will, are so vivacious, so eternally on the wing, that they must, even in small societies, have a frequent collision; the rust therefore will wear off sooner:  but in Britain it often goes with a man to his grave; nay, he dares not even pen a hic jacet to speak out for him after his death.

“Let them rub it off by travel,” said the baronet’s brother, who was a striking instance of excellent metal, shamefully rusted.  I had drawn my chair near his.  Let me paint the honest old man:  ’tis but one passing sentence to preserve his image in my mind.