 seemingly desperate leap than mine, and bringing me

out of the water, dead as a door nail, two hours did he incessantly labour to restore me to life! I, who a few hours before had struck him! And here do I live to relate all this!
I think I could have forgiven him any thing sooner than this triumph over me. Yet he claims and forces my admiration. I must own he is a dauntless fellow—Yes, he has a heart—! Damn him! I could kiss him one minute and kill him the next!
He has been the hero of the women ever since. But they are safe enough, for him. He has principles! He is a man of virtue, forsooth! He is not the naughty cat that steals the cream! Let him be virtuous. Let him lave in his own imaginary waters of purity; but do

not let him offend others, every moment, by jumping out and calling—"Here! Look at me! How white and spotless I am!"
As I tell you, the women are bewitched to him; are all in love with him! My sister, Louisa, does not scruple to tell him so, in her letter! But she is one of these high-flyers. Nor can I for the soul of me persuade myself that, family pride excepted, she—ay, she herself, my she, would not prefer him to me. But these gentry are all so intolerably prudent that, talk to them of passions, and they answer they must not have any. Oh, no! They are above such mundane weakness!
As for him, he sits in as much stern state as the Old Red Lion of Brentford.

Yes, he is my Lord Chief Justice Nevergrin! He cannot qualify, he! He is prime tinker to Madam Virtue, and carries no softening epithets in his budget. Folly is folly, and vice vice in his Good Friday vocabulary—Titles too are gilt gingerbread, dutch dolls, punch's puppet show. A duke or a scavenger with him are exactly the same—Saving and excepting the aforesaid exceptions, of wisdom, virtue, and the good of the whole!
Did you never observe, Fairfax, how these fellows of obscure birth labour to pull down rank, and reduce all to their own level?
Not but it is cursed provoking to be obliged to own that a title is no sufficient passport for so much as common sense.

I sincerely think there is not so foolish a fellow in the three kingdoms, as the noble blockhead to whom I have the honour to be related, Lord Evelyn
