“I hear my mother on the stairs,” said the boy.
I shook him by the hand—“Give her this, my lad,” said I, and left the house.—It rained—I called a coach—drove to a coffee-house, but not having a farthing in my pocket, borrowed a shilling at the bar.
The Citizen.
I took a fat citizen, and having first shut him up in his little sitting-room, I proceeded to take his picture. I beheld his body gorged with long gratification and confinement to the house, and I felt what kind of sickness of the stomach it is that arises from having eaten too much. On looking nearer, I beheld him bloated and feverish. In sixty years the country breeze had not once fanned his blood, and he had seen the sun and moon but indistinctly in all that time. He was seated, or rather buried in a large arm-chair, which stood in front of the fire-place, and which might have served either for a chair or a bed. A bundle of promissory notes lay on the table, scrawled all over, the fruits of the dark and dismal days and nights he had spent there. He had one of these small slips of paper in his hand, and with a pen he was etching his own signature and the day of the month, to add it to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up an eye, swimming in fat, towards the door, bent his head forward earnestly to listen, and then went on with his work of delight.
I heard the rubbing of his hands when he had with difficulty turned his body round to place the note on the bundle—he gave a sigh of joy. I saw the ecstasy that entered into his soul—I burst into a laugh—I could not contain myself at the picture which my fancy had drawn.
Togatus.
From The Gownsman, Cambridge, 1830.
Fragments in the Manner of Sterne, by Isaac Brandon. Published in 1797, with fine plates, by Kirk, contained the following chapters:—Address to the Shade of Yorick—War—Prosperity—and Humanity—A Shandean Minister—Justice—Necessity—Anna and an “Apostrophe to the Genius of Yorick Redivivus.”
A second edition was published in 1798, with some additional matter.