The Adventures of Hugh Trevor

by Thomas Holcroft

After this preface, I began my narrative; and succinctly related the principal of those events with which the reader already is acquainted. Nor did the state of my feelings and the strong sense of injury which was ever present to my imagination, when I came to recapitulate my adventures since I first left college, suffer me to colour with a negligent or a feeble hand.

Some of the incidents necessarily induced me to mention Olivia, and betray my sentiments in part: which the questions of Mr. Evelyn, put with kindness, delicacy, and interest that was evidently unaffected, induced me at length wholly to reveal, with all the tenderness and the vehemence of passion.

I was encouraged or rather impelled to this confidence by the emotions which Mr. Evelyn betrayed, in his countenance, voice, and manner. His hopes, his fears, and his affections, were so much in unison with my own, his eye so often glistened and his cheek so frequently glowed, that it was impossible for the heart not to open all its recesses, and pour out not only its complaints but its very follies.

Of all the pleasures in which the soul of man most delights that of sympathy is surely the chief. It can unite and mingle not only two but ten millions of spirits as one. Could a world be spectators of the sorrows of Lear, a world would with one consent participate in them: so omnipotent is the power of sympathy. It is the consolation of poverty, it is the cordial of friendship, it is the essence of love. Pride and suspicion are its chief enemies; and they are the vices that engender the most baneful of the miseries of man.

Mr. Evelyn remained, after I had ended, for some time in deep meditation; now and then casting his eyes toward me and then taking them away, as if fearful of offending my sensibility and again falling into thought. At length, fixing them more firmly and with an open benignity of countenance, he thus broke silence.

'I have been devising, my noble young friend, allow me to call you so, by what means I should best make myself understood to you; and how most effectually prevail on you to contribute to my happiness, and to those great ends for which souls of ardour like yours are so highly gifted. I have already sketched my principles, concerning the use and abuse of property. One of those rare occasions on which it may be excellently employed now presents itself. You are in pursuit of science, by which a world is to be improved. To the best of my ability I follow the same track: but I have the means, which you want. You have too little: I have too much. It is my province, and, if you consent, as I hope and trust you will, it will be my supreme pleasure to supply the deficiency. I am acquainted with the delicacy of your sentiments: but I am likewise acquainted with the expansion of your heart, and with its power of rising superior to the false distinctions which at present regulate society. I might assume the severe tone of the moralist, and urge your compliance with my request as a duty: but I would rather indulge what may perhaps be the foible of immature virtue, and follow the affectionate impulse which binds me to you as my friend and brother. Beside these are vibrations with which I am persuaded your warm and kindred heart will more readily harmonize. In youth, we willingly obey impetuous sensations: but reluctantly listen to the slow and frigid deductions of reason, when they are in contradiction to our habits and prejudices. I therefore repeat, you are my friend and brother; and I conjure you, by those generous and magnanimous feelings of which your whole life proves you are so eminently susceptible, not to wound me by refusal. Do not consider me as the acquaintance of a day; for, by hearing your history, I have travelled with you through life, and seem as if I had been the inmate of your bosom even from your years of infancy. No: far from being strangers, we have been imbibing similar principles, similar views, and similar affections. Our souls have communed for years, and rejoice that the time at length is come in which that individual intercourse for which they may most justly be said to have panted is opened. If you object, if you hesitate, if you suspect me, you will annihilate the purest sensations which these souls have mutually cherished: you will wrong both yourself and me.'

There was an emanating fervor in the look, deportment, and the very gestures, of Mr. Evelyn that was irresistible. It surpassed his language. It led me out of myself. It hurried me beyond the narrow limits of prejudices and prepossessions, and transported me wherever it pleased. I was no longer in mortal society; surrounded by selfishness, cunning, and cowardly suspicions. He had borne me on his wings, and seated me among the Gods; whose ministers were wisdom and beneficence. I burst into exclamation.

'I own it, you are my friend! you are my brother! I accept your offers, I will receive your benefits, but I will retaliate.'

I paused. I felt the egotism of my own thoughts, but could not subdue the torrent. I continued inwardly to vow, with the most vehement asseverations, that I would repay every mark of kindness he should bestow fifty fold. The heart of man will not rest satisfied with inferiority, and has recourse to a thousand stratagems, a thousand deceptions, to relieve itself of any such doubts; which it entertains with impatience, and pain.

My own enthusiasm however was soon inclined to subside; and I became ready to tax myself with that meanness and degradation which I had felt, and expressed, at the beginning of the discussion. Of this the quick penetration of Mr. Evelyn seemed to be aware; and he so effectually counteracted these emotions that, at length, I abandoned all thoughts of resistance; or of betraying those jealousies which would now have appeared almost insulting, to a man who had displayed a spirit so disinterested.