 or procure it by interest, either of
which clauses was rather to be wish'd than hoped for by him. On no better a
plan, however, had this improvident father suffer'd this youth, a youth of great
promise, to run up to the age of manhood, or near it at least, in next to
idleness; and had, besides, taken no sort of pains to give him even the common
premonitions against the vices of the town, and the dangers of all sorts which
wait the unexperienc'd and unwary in it. He liv'd at home, and at discretion,
with his father, who himself kept a mistress; and for the rest, provided Charles
did not ask him for money, he was indolently kind to him: he might lie out when
he pleas'd; any excuse would serve, and even his reprimands were so slight that
they carried with them rather an air of connivance at the fault than any serious
control or constraint. But, to supply his calls for money, Charles, whose mother
was dead, had, by her side, a grandmother who doted upon him. She had a
considerable annuity to live on, and very regularly parted with every shilling
she could spare to this darling of hers, to the no little heartburn of his
father; who was vex'd, not that she by this means fed his son's extravagance,
but that she preferr'd Charles to himself; and we shall too soon see what a
fatal turn such a mercenary jealousy could operate in the breast of a father.
    Charles was, however, by the means of his grandmother's lavish fondness,
very sufficiently enabled to keep a mistress so easily contented as my love made
me; and my good fortune, for such I must ever call it, threw me in his way, in
the manner above related, just as he was on the look-out for one.
    As to temper, the even sweetness of it made him seem born for domestic
happiness: tender, naturally polite, and gentle-manner'd; it could never be his
fault if ever jars or animosities ruffled a calm he was so qualified in every
way to maintain or restore. Without those great or shining qualities that
constitute a genius, or are fit to make a noise in the world, he had all those
humble ones that compose the softer social merit: plain common sense, set off
with every grace of modesty and good nature, made him, if not admir'd, what is
much happier, universally belov'd and
