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TO THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIABY A FRIEND OF THE LATE ELIA
This pentleman, who for some months past had been in a deing way, hath at length paid his final tribute to nature.
To say truth, it is time he were gohe humour of the thing, if there was ever mu it, retty well exhausted; and a two years and a half existence has been a tolerable duration for a phantom.
I am now at liberty to fess, that much which I have heard objected to my late friends writings was well-founded. Crude they are, I grant you -- a sort of unlicked, indite things -- villainously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and phrases. They had not been his, if they had been other than such; aer it is, that a writer should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a naturalness (so called) that should be strao him. Egotistical they have been pronounced by some who did not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, was often true only (historically) of another; as in a former Essay (to save many instances) -- where uhe first person (his favorite figure) he shadows forth the forlore of a try-boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and es -- in direct opposition to his own earl<var></var>y history.
My late friend was in many respects a singular character. Those who did not like him, hated him; and some, who once liked him afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth is, he gave himself too little what he uttered, and in whos<bdi>99lib.</bdi>e presence. He observed her time nor place, and would een out with what came uppermost. With the severe religionist lie would pass for a freethinker; while the other fa set him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he belied his ses. Few uood him; and I am not certain that at all times he quite uood himself. He too much affected that dangerous figure -- irony. He sowed doubtful speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. -- He would interrupt the gravest discussion with some light jest; a, perhaps, not quite irrelevant in ears that could uand it. Your long and much talkers hated him. The informal habit of his mind, joio an ie impediment of speech, forbade him to be all orator; and he seemed determihat no one else should play that part when he resent. He etit and ordinary in his person and appearance. I have seen him sometimes in what is called good pany, but where he has been a stranger, sit silent, an<code>9９ｌｉｂ.</code>d be suspected for an odd fellow; till some unlucky occasion provoking it, be would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether senseless perhaps, if rightly taken), which has stamped his character for the evening. It was hit or miss with him; but imes out of ten, he trived by this device to send away a whole pany his enemies. His ceptions rose kihan his utterance, and his happiest impromptus had the appearance of effort. He has been accused to be witty, when in truth he was but struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He chose his panions for some individuality of character which they maed. -- Henot many persons of sce, and few professed literati, were of his cils. They were, for the most part, persons of an uain fortune; and, as to such people only nothing is more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled (though moderate) ine, he passed with most of them freat miser. To my knowledge this was a mistake. His <footer>9９ｌｉｂ.</footer>intimados, to fess a truth, were in the worlds eye a ragged regiment. He found them floating on the surface of society; and the colour, or something else, in the weed pleased him. The burrs stu -- but they were good and loving burrs for all that. He never greatly cared for the society of what are called good people. If any of these were sdalised (and offences were sure to arise), he could not help it. When be has been remonstrated with for not making more cessions to the feeling of good people, he would retort by asking, what one point did these good people ever cede to him? He was temperate in his meals and diversions, but always kept a little on this side of abstemiousness. Only in the use of the Indian weed he might be thought a little excessive. He took it, he would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry -- as the friendly vapour asded, how his Prattle would curl up sometimes with it! the ligaments, which toied him, were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a statist!
I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that my old friend is departed. His jests were beginning to grow obsolete, and his stories to be found out. He felt the approaches of age and while he preteo g to life, you saw how slender were the ties left to bind him. Disc with him latterly on this subject, he expressed himself with a pettishness, which I thought unworthy of him. In our walks about his suburbareat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some children belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed and curtseyed, as he thought, in an especial mao him. "They take me for a visiting governor," he muttered early. He had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like anything important and parochial. He thought that he approached o that stamp daily. He had a general aversion from being treated like a grave or respectable character, a a wary eye upon the advances of age that should s<footer></footer>o entitle him. He herded always, while it ossible, with people youhan himself. He did not to the march of time, but was dragged along in the procession. His manners lagged behind his years. He was too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never sate gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of infancy had burnt into him, and he resehe impertinenanhood. These were weaknesses; but such as they were, they are a key to explicate some of his writings.
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