stem the torrent. He now found himself playing at a losing game, almost exhausted of all his cash, and engaged for the payment of six hundred pounds; so that, driven into every possible corner, he was compelled to send this scheme after the rest, and sell the materials for a supply.
Now it was that Charles discovered who had been his partners in the paper; for, their end being answered, they published his disgrace in the most triumphant language their virulent and low malevolence could suggest. They recapitulated all his former miscarriages, gave an invidious turn to his whole conduct, misrepresented him in regard to his opera, and warned the public how it encouraged a

man who, instead of being avowedly its servant, had the arrogant presumption to set up a standard of taste, and the vanity to suppose that all the world must bow to his ipse dixit.
Charles avoided, with every possible industry, all chance of getting into a personal quarrel upon this occasion; knowing that he could reap no honour from a contention with men of no character, and that they would, in their report of him, so pervert his motives of resentment, as to throw a public stigma on him, let his conduct be ever so right.—Indeed his notions upon this subject were a little heteroclite, for he maintained that duelling was not only a very barbarous, but a very dishonourable custom, and that it served more to assist the views of cowards and assassins, than to support the dignity of such as possessed true courage.
In defence of this opinion, he certainly advanced a great deal of persuasive reasoning, which unfortunately nobody listened to; for people, however they break through established customs—whether by stealing your purse, or your peace of mind, or cutting your throat—never appear publicly to disapprove of them.
This very opinion was taken advantage of by

Gloss, who negociated a quarrel so well, that our hero received a challenge from a rascal, and refused to meet him. His pusillanimity was immediately the public topic, and though he was a short time after under the unpleasant necessity of kicking the fellow out of a coffee-house who had had the impudence to traduce him, yet, in the next company he went he scarcely was spoken to.
Charles, securely wrapt up in his own conscious honour, certainly held all this in ineffable contempt; yet fearing lest accumulated provocation should induce him to depart from that forbearance which his rectitude had pointed out in his case to be necessary, he wisely resolved to read none of the abuse written against him, lest he should be provoked into a reply that