Mercy! thought I, what a friend to kindness is party!
“Do you see Scott?” cried he.
“No, I never saw him; pray show him to me,”
“There he is, in green; just now by the Speaker, now moved by the committee; in two minutes more he will be somewhere else, skipping backwards and forwards; what a grasshopper it is!”
“I cannot look at him,” cried I, “without recollecting a very extraordinary letter from him, that I read last summer in the newspaper, where he answers some attack that he says has been made upon him, because the term is used of ‘a very insignificant fellow,’ and he printed two or three letters in ‘The Public Advertiser,’ in following days, to prove, with great care and pains, that he knew it was all meant as an abuse of himself, from those words!”
“And what,” cried he, laughing, “do you say to that notion now you see him?”
“That no one,” cried I, examining him with my glass, “can possibly dispute his claim!”
What pity that Mr. Hastings should have trusted his cause to so frivolous an agent! I believe, and indeed it is the general belief, both of foes and friends, that to his officious and injudicious zeal the present prosecution is wholly owing.
Next, Mr. Windham pointed out Mr. Francis to me. ‘TIS a singular circumstance, that the friend who most loves and the enemy Who most hates Mr. Hastings should bear the same name![264] Mr. Windham, with all the bias of party, gave me then the highest character of this Mr. Francis, whom he called one of the most ill-used of men. Want of documents how to answer forced me to be silent, oppositely as I thought. But it was a very unpleasant situation to me, as I saw that Mr. Windham still conceived me to have no other interest than a common, and probably to his mind, a weak compassion for the prisoner—that prisoner who, frequently looking around, saw me, I am certain, and saw with whom I was engaged.
The subject of Mr. Francis again drew him back to Mr. Hastings, but with more severity of mind. “A prouder heart,” cried he, “an ambition more profound, were never, I suppose, lodged in any mortal mould than in that man! With what a port he entered! did you observe him? his air! I saw not his face, but his air his port!”