"You see, yir honor, this was the way it happened," said Darby. "Nawthin' would save me but I should give a Tay-Party at the Three Blacks one evenin' after a hurlin'-match—Did yir honor ever hurl a bit? Oh! then sure it's the finest divarsion that any one cud sit his mind upon, barrin' it doesn't ind in a row, as mostly for the best part it does. But never mind that,—it's fine fun, anyhow; though by it I did get this clink on the nose, that made me lave off snuff-takin' ever since as a dirty habit! Oh! a hurlin'-match is a grate sight, and many a good clergy I've seen strip to the work. There was Father M'Gauvran—yir honor has heard of Father M'Gauvran, that got a son an' heir for Pat Mac Gavany, by givin' his wife an ould surplus that he had by him for some time? Oh! it would raise the cockles of yir heart to see how he wud whip a ball along. He was a grate hurler, anyhow; he was the boy at the bawke!"
Conceiving that Darby would not terminate before midnight (if he ever would at all), I interrupted him, saying, "When you return, I shall be very happy to hear the particulars of your Tay-Party, but for the present I must decline the narrative. Set out, if you mean to go: when you come back, I will listen vary attentively to the whole recital."
"Oh, then I suppose I'm tiring yir honor! But stop a bit,—I'll be here in the turn of a snipe;" saying which, he disappeared. I had not been long left to my own reflections before he came up stairs, and, without any of his previous knocks and delays, he entered my room hurriedly, and, throwing down a small book on the table before me, said, "There, sir; I hope that will amuse you while I am away: it's an account of my tay-party, by Lame Kelly the poet, that wudn't get drunk that night acause he sed he wud write it afore his next sleep. Read it, masther," said Darby; "and never mind the jokes upon me."—"Go your ways," said I.—"I've only one way to go, sir," said Darby.—"Well, then," said I, "in God's name take that."—"In God's name be it, then," replied Darby, and ultimately left me.
SHAKSPEARE PAPERS.—No. II.
JAQUES.
"As he passed through the fields, and saw the animals around him,—'Ye,' said he, 'are happy, and need not envy me that walk thus among you burthened with myself; nor do I, ye gentle beings, envy your felicity, for it is not the felicity of man. I have many distresses from which ye are free; I fear pain when I do not feel it; I sometimes shrink at evils recollected, and sometimes start at evils anticipated. Surely the equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.'
"With observations like these the prince amused himself as he returned, uttering them with a plaintive voice, yet with a look that discovered him to feel some complacence in his own perspicacity, and to receive some solace of the miseries of life from consciousness of the delicacy with which he felt, and the eloquence with which he bewailed them."
—Rasselas, chap. ii.