'Hilarius is a downright country gentleman; a bon vivant; an indefatigable sportsman. He can drink his gallon at a sitting, and will tell you he was neither sick nor sorry in his life. Having an estate of above five thousand a year, his strong beer, ale, and wine cellar are always well stored; to either of which, as also to his table, abounding in plenty of good victuals, ill-sorted and ill-dressed, every voter and fox-hunter claims a kind of right. He roars for the Church, which he never visits, and is eternally cracking his coarse jests and talking obscenity to the parsons, whom if he can make fuddled, and expose to contempt, it is the highest pleasure he can enjoy. As for his lay friends, nothing is more common with him than to set them and their servants dead drunk on their horses; and should any of them be found half smothered in a ditch the next morning, it affords him excellent diversion for a twelvemonth after. No one is readier to club a laugh with you, but he has no ear to the voice of distress or complaint. Thus Hilarius, on the false credit of generosity and good humour, swims triumphantly with the stream of applause without one single virtue in his composition.'
No. 142. The 'World.'—Sept. 18, 1755.
Extract from the letter of a lady, a lover of peace and quietness, on the sufferings produced by her connection with people who are fond of noise. After describing the violence practised in her own home, the writer continues:—
'At last I was sent to board with a distant relation, who had been captain of a man-of-war, who had given up his commission and retired into the country. Unfortunately for poor me, the captain still retained a passion for firing a great gun, and had mounted, on a little fortification that was thrown up against the front of his house, eleven nine-pounders, which were constantly discharged ten or a dozen times over on the arrival of visitors, and on all holidays and rejoicings. The noise of these cannon was more terrible to me than all the rest, and would have rendered my continuance there intolerable, if a young gentleman, a relation of the captain's, had not held me by the heart-strings, and softened by the most tender courtship in the world the horrors of these firings.'
The unfortunate lady's married life was doomed, however, to prove a union of noise and contention.
No. 150. The 'World.'—Nov. 13, 1755.
