Olaudah Equiano
[1745–97]
Olaudah Equiano was born in an Igbo village, Essaka, probably the present-day Iseke in Nigeria. Kidnapped at the age of eleven by Africans, he was sold to white slave traders. He travelled to Barbados, then to Virginia, where he was purchased by an English naval officer, Michael Pascal. In 1759, he was baptized and renamed Gustavus Vasa. He served Pascal for many years, mixing with British families and benefiting from an education both on and off the ship. Equiano was therefore bitterly disappointed when Pascal unexpectedly sold him back into American slavery. Stirred by this move, and now working on the merchant ships of his new owner, Equiano began trading for himself, gradually earning enough money to buy back his freedom.
As a free man, his voyages continued: to the Arctic as an assistant to a surgeon, to the Mediterranean as a manservant to an English traveller and to Central America, where he spent six months among the Miskito Indians. Eventually he settled in England, where he became a leading spokesman for the black population in London, contributing greatly to the fight for abolition. In 1787, he was appointed commissary for stores to the expedition that was to return many freed slaves to a new settlement at Freetown in Sierra Leone, but he was dismissed after disagreements with the organizers before the expedition left England. He was now free to complete his autobiography, already several years in the making.
Published in London in 1789, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vasa the African, written by himself was a bestseller. It went into eight British editions, as well as an American edition (1791), and was translated into Dutch (1790), German (1792) and Russian (1794). It continued to be read after his death, going into many more editions in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although Ukawsaw Gronniosaw’s Narrative had already been published, Equiano’s work, being written in the author’s own hand, was thus the first authentic account in English of the life of an African slave.
In 1792, after the publication of his book, Equiano married Susannah Cullen of Soham, Cambridge. He then travelled widely throughout Britain, selling copies of the book and speaking publicly against slavery. He also became a regular contributor of letters and reviews to the Public Advertiser.
By the time of his death in 1797, Equiano had become a relatively prosperous moneylender. The fruits of his estate went to his sole surviving daughter, Johanna. His wife had died two years earlier and his four-year-old second daughter, Anna Maria, died just months after Equiano himself.
Equiano came of age at a time when the lobby for the abolition of slavery in British possessions was becoming increasingly powerful. He not only had a platform from which to speak but also displayed outstanding skills as a writer. He was able to help his contemporaries understand what it meant to be culturally an outsider from British society, and in the extract from his autobiography that follows he offers some insight into the difficulties faced by a newcomer who does not fully understand the English language.
Voyage to England
I stayed in this island for a few days; I believe it could not be above a fortnight; when I and some few more slaves, that were not saleable amongst the rest, from very much fretting, were shipped off in a sloop for North America. On the passage we were better treated than when we were coming from Africa, and we had plenty of rice and fat pork. We were landed up a river a good way from the sea, about Virginia county, where we saw few or none of our native Africans, and not one soul who could talk to me. I was a few weeks weeding grass, and gathering stones in a plantation; and at last all my companions were distributed different ways, and only myself was left. I was now exceedingly miserable, and thought myself worse off than any of the rest of my companions; for they could talk to each other, but I had no person to speak to that I could understand. In this state I was constantly grieving and pining, and wishing for death rather than any thing else. While I was in this plantation the gentleman, to whom I suppose the estate belonged, being unwell, I was one day sent for to his dwelling house to fan him; when I came into the room where he was I was very much affrighted at some things I saw, and the more so as I had seen a black woman slave as I came through the house, who was cooking the dinner, and the poor creature was cruelly loaded with various kinds of iron machines; she had one particularly on her head, which locked her mouth so fast that she could scarcely speak; and could not eat nor drink. I was much astonished and shocked at this contrivance, which I afterwards learned was called the iron muzzle. Soon after I had a fan put into my hand, to fan the gentleman while he slept; and so I did indeed with great fear. While he was fast asleep I indulged myself a great deal in looking about the room, which to me appeared very fine and curious. The first object that engaged my attention was a watch which hung on the chimney, and was going. I was quite surprised at the noise it made, and was afraid it would tell the gentleman any thing I might do amiss; and when I immediately after observed a picture hanging in the room, which appeared constantly to look at me, I was still more affrighted, having never seen such things as these before. At one time I thought it was something relative to magic; and not seeing it move I thought it might be some way the whites had to keep their great men when they died, and offer them libation as we used to do to our friendly spirits. In this state of anxiety I remained till my master awoke, when I was dismissed out of the room, to my no small satisfaction and relief; for I thought that these people were all made up of wonders. In this place I was called Jacob; but on board the African ship I was called Michael. I had been some time in this miserable, forlorn, and much dejected state, without having any one to talk to, which made my life a burden, when the kind and unknown hand of the Creator (who in very deed leads the blind in a way they know not) now began to appear, to my comfort; for one day the captain of a merchant ship, called the Industrious Bee, came on some business to my master’s house. This gentleman, whose name was Michael Henry Pascal, was a lieutenant in the royal navy, but now commanded this trading ship, which was somewhere in the confines of the county many miles off. While he was at my master’s house it happened that he saw me, and liked me so well that he made a purchase of me. I think I have often heard him say he gave thirty or forty pounds sterling for me; but I do not now remember which. However, he meant me for a present to some of his friends in England: and I was sent accordingly from the house of my then master, one Mr Campbell, to the place where the ship lay; I was conducted on horseback by an elderly black man, (a mode of travelling which appeared very odd to me). When I arrived I was carried on board a fine large ship, loaded with tobacco, &c. and just ready to sail for England. I now thought my condition much mended; I had sails to lie on, and plenty of good victuals to eat; and every body on board used me very kindly, quite contrary to what I had seen of any white people before; I therefore began to think that they were not all of the same disposition. A few days after I was on board we sailed for England. I was still at a loss to conjecture my destiny. By this time, however, I could smarter a little imperfect English; and I wanted to know as well as I could where we were going. Some of the people of the ship used to tell me they were going to carry me back to my own country, and this made me very happy. I was quite rejoiced at the sound of going back; and thought if I should get home what wonders I should have to tell. But I was reserved for another fate, and was soon undeceived when we came within sight of the English coast. While I was on board this ship, my captain and master named me Gustavus Vasa. I at that time began to understand him a little, and refused to be called so, and told him as well as I could that I would be called Jacob; but he said I should not, and still called me Gustavus; and when I refused to answer to my new name, which at first I did, it gained me many a cuff; so at length I submitted, and was obliged to bear the present name, by which I have been known ever since. The ship had a very long passage; and on that account we had very short allowance of provisions. Towards the last we had only one pound and a half of bread per week, and about the same quantity of meat, and one quart of water a day. We spoke with only one vessel the whole time we were at sea, and but once we caught a few fishes. In our extremities the captain and people told me in jest they would kill and eat me; but I thought them in earnest, and was depressed beyond measure, expecting every moment to be my last. While I was in this situation one evening they caught, with a good deal of trouble, a large shark, and got it on board. This gladdened my poor heart exceedingly, as I thought it would serve the people to eat instead of their eating me; but very soon, to my astonishment, they cut off a small part of the tail, and tossed the rest over the side. This renewed my consternation; and I did not know what to think of these white people, though I very much feared they would kill and eat me. There was on board the ship a young lad who had never been at sea before, about four or five years older than myself: his name was Richard Baker. He was a native of America, had received an excellent education, and was of a most amiable temper. Soon after I went on board he shewed me a great deal of partiality and attention, and in return I grew extremely fond of him. We at length became inseparable; and, for the space of two years, he was of very great use to me, and was my constant companion and instructor. Although this dear youth had many slaves of his own, yet he and I have gone through many sufferings together on shipboard; and we have many nights lain in each other’s bosoms when we were in great distress. Thus such a friendship was cemented between us as we cherished till his death, which, to my very great sorrow, happened in the year 1759, when he was up the Archipelago, on board his majesty’s ship the Preston: an event which I have never ceased to regret, as I lost at once a kind interpreter, an agreeable companion, and a faithful friend; who, at the age of fifteen, discovered a mind superior to prejudice; and who was not ashamed to notice, to associate with, and to be the friend and instructor of one who was ignorant, a stranger, of a different complexion, and a slave! My master had lodged in his mother’s house in America: he respected him very much, and made him always eat with him in the cabin. He used often to tell him jocularly that he would kill me to eat. Sometimes he would say to me – the black people were not good to eat, and would ask me if we did not eat people in my country. I said, No: then he said he would kill Dick (as he always called him) first, and afterwards me. Though this hearing relieved my mind a little as to myself, I was alarmed for Dick and whenever he was called I used to be very much afraid he was to be killed; and I would peep and watch to see if they were going to kill him: nor was I free from this consternation till we made the land. One night we lost a man overboard; and the cries and noise were so great and confused, in stopping the ship, that I, who did not know what was the matter, began, as usual, to be very much afraid, and to think they were going to make an offering with me, and perform some magic; which I still believed they dealt in. As the waves were very high I thought the Ruler of the seas was angry, and I expected to be offered up to appease him. This filled my mind with agony, and I could not any more that night close my eyes again to rest. However, when daylight appeared I was a little eased in my mind; but still every time I was called I used to think it was to be killed. Some time after this we saw some very large fish, which I afterwards found were called grampusses. They looked to me extremely terrible, and made their appearance just at dusk; and were so near as to blow the water on the ship’s deck. I believed them to be the rulers of the sea; and, as the white people did not make any offerings at any time, I thought they were angry with them: and, at last, what confirmed my belief was, the wind just then died away, and a calm ensued, and in consequence of it the ship stopped going. I supposed that the fish had performed this, and I hid myself in the fore part of the ship, through fear of being offered up to appease them, every minute peeping and quaking: but my good friend Dick came shortly towards me, and I took an opportunity to ask him, as well as I could, what these fish were. Not being able to talk much English, I could but just make him understand my question; and not at all, when I asked him if any offerings were to be made to them: however, he told me these fish would swallow any body; which sufficiently alarmed me. Here he was called away by the captain, who was leaning over the quarterdeck railing and looking at the fish; and most of the people were busied in getting a barrel of pitch to light, for them to play with. The captain now called me to him, having learned some of my apprehensions from Dick; and having diverted himself and others for some time with my fears, which appeared ludicrous enough in my crying and trembling, he dismissed me. The barrel of pitch was now lighted and put over the side into the water: by this time it was just dark, and the fish went after it; and, to my great joy, I saw them no more.
However, all my alarms began to subside when we got sight of land; and at last the ship arrived at Falmouth, after a passage of thirteen weeks. Every heart on board seemed gladdened on our reaching the shore, and none more than mine. The captain immediately went on shore, and sent on board some fresh provisions, which we wanted very much: we made good use of them, and our famine was soon turned into feasting, almost without ending. It was about the beginning of the spring 1757 when I arrived in England, and I was near twelve years of age at that time. I was very much struck with the buildings and the pavement of the streets in Falmouth; and, indeed, any object I saw filled me with new surprise. One morning, when I got upon deck, I saw it covered all over with the snow that fell over-night: as I had never seen any thing of the kind before, I thought it was salt; so I immediately ran down to the mate and desired him, as well as I could, to come and see how somebody in the night had thrown salt all over the deck. He, knowing what it was, desired me to bring some of it down to him: accordingly I took up a handful of it, which I found very cold indeed; and when I brought it to him he desired me to taste it. I did so, and I was surprised beyond measure. I then asked him what it was, he told me it was snow: but I could not in anywise understand him. He asked me if we had no such thing in my country; and I told him, No. I then asked him the use of it, and who made it; he told me a great man in the heavens, called God: but here again I was to all intents and purposes at a loss to understand him; and the more so, when a little after I saw the air filled with it, in a heavy shower, which fell down on the same day. After this I went to church; and having never been at such a place before, I was again amazed at seeing and hearing the service. I asked all I could about it; and they gave me to understand it was worshipping God, who made us and all things. I was still at a great loss, and soon got into an endless field of inquiries, as well as I was able to speak and ask about things. However, my little friend Dick used to be my best interpreter; for I could make free with him, and he always instructed me with pleasure: and from what I could understand by him of this God, and in seeing these white people did not sell one another, as we did, I was much pleased; and in this I thought they were much happier than we Africans. I was astonished at the wisdom of the white people in all things I saw; but was amazed at their not sacrificing; or making any offerings, and eating with unwashed hands, and touching the dead. I likewise could not help remarking the particular slenderness of their women, which I did not at first like; and I thought they were not so modest and shamefaced as the African women.
I had often seen my master and Dick employed in reading; and I had a great curiosity to talk to the books, as I thought they did; and so to learn how all things had a beginning: for that purpose I have often taken up a book, and have talked to it, and then put my ears to it, when alone, in hope it would answer me; and I have been very much concerned when I found it remained silent.
William Thackeray
[1811–63]
William Makepeace Thackeray was born in Calcutta, the only son of Anglo-Indian parents. In 1816 his father died and Thackeray was sent back to England, to live with his aunt, Mrs Ritchie, in Chiswick. He began his private education at Chiswick Mall, where he stayed until 1822, at which point his mother and stepfather returned to England. The family then moved to Addiscombe College, where his stepfather had been appointed governor, and Thackeray was sent to school at Charterhouse in Smithfield, London, where he stayed until 1828. He then entered Trinity College, Cambridge, but left after two years without taking a degree.
In 1829 a vacation to Paris secured a lifelong love of the city. After leaving Cambridge in 1830, he travelled to Germany and spent six months at Weimar, where he met Goethe. He returned to London in 1831 and spent a short time at law school. Then, having joined the National Standard, a newspaper with which his stepfather was connected, he travelled to Paris as a correspondent. The newspaper failed and, with most of his patrimony lost in the Indian bank failures of 1833, Thackeray turned to his skills as a caricaturist, studying art in Paris from 1834 to 1837. By 1835 he was contributing to Fraser’s Magazine, and the following year he unsuccessfully applied to Dickens to illustrate The Pickwick Papers.
Struggling in his career as a painter, in 1836 Thackeray acquired a second appointment as a Paris correspondent, this time on the radical newspaper The Constitutional, which was set up by his stepfather. On the strength of this new position, that same year he was married to Isabella Shawe, the daughter of an expatriate Anglo-Irish family. The newspaper folded after only one year and in 1837 Thackeray returned to London. Forced to write for a living, he contributed various reviews and articles to The Times and serial works to Fraser’s Magazine, including his first real novel, Barry Lyndon (1844). Between 1837 and 1840, his wife gave birth to three daughters. After the birth of the third, Mrs Thackeray, who had been showing signs of insanity, had a complete breakdown and was confined. The children went to live with Thackeray’s grandmother in Paris.
During the 1840s Thackeray’s reputation grew. He published a series of travel books, but his popularity was largely due to his writings for Punch, which began in 1842 and lasted for ten years. These included the highly successful ‘Book of Snobs’ (1846–7), a series of sketches which characterized the class-consciousness of the early Victorian age. His satirization of the English upper middle classes continued in the parodies of ‘Punch’s Prize Novelists’ (1847) and the anti-heroic vision of his first major serialized novel, Vanity Fair (1847–8). Following the success of Vanity Fair, Thackeray wrote the semi-autobiographical The History of Pendennis (1848–50). It was during this time that he was to have his first bout of serious ill-health.
By now Thackeray had installed himself, his daughters and his grandmother at a house in Kensington. In 1848 he began a platonic relationship with Jane Brookfield, the wife of a college friend, which she was to end in 18 51. The signs of unfulfilled love show in The History of Henry Esmond (1852), a historical novel set during the reign of Queen Anne that reflected Thackeray’s growing interest in the history of the eighteenth century. In 1851 Thackeray began his series of lectures on ‘The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century’ (published under that title in 1853), which was to form the basis of a lucrative lecture tour of the United States in 1852–3. During his time in the United States Thackeray tried, without success, to acquire some sort of civil or diplomatic post. This was presumably an attempt to secure for himself a more steady income, as Thackeray always felt that his writing was based on financial rather than artistic necessity.
Back in England, he returned to his theme of English social life in The Newcomes (1853–5). Following the publication of The Rose and the Ring (1855), he went back to the United States for a second lecture tour, which was to become the basis for The Four Georges (1860).
Attempting to enter into politics in 1857, Thackeray stood for Oxford and was narrowly beaten. In 1859 he became the founding editor of The Cornhill Magazine, a monthly literary journal that achieved huge success. However, suffering from increasing ill-health, he had to give up the post in 1862. He published his last works in the journal, the short novel hovel the Widower (1860) and The Adventures of Philip (1861–2), which were said by critics to be an unoriginal rehash of his earlier works on English society. He died on Christmas Eve in 1863, leaving his final novel, Denis Duval (1864), unfinished.
Thackeray’s biting satire of English middle-class pretence and posturing permeates the greater part of both his fiction and his non-fiction. Over a century later, the great Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James could boast of having read Vanity Fair at least half a dozen times before he was out of his teens, Thackeray’s satire was applicable to colonial Trinidad, and in fact to most middle-class societies anywhere in the British Empire. However, Thackeray’s concern with the hypocrisies of English society was born out of his own ambivalence towards his ‘home’. The following essay, ‘A Word about Dinners’ from ‘Book of Snobs’ (1846), was one of several which sought to ‘expose’ English society.
A Word about Dinners
English Society, my beloved Bob, has this eminent advantage over all other – that is, if there be any society left in the wretched distracted old European continent – that it is above all others a dinner-giving society. A people like the Germans, that dines habitually, and with what vast appetite I need not say, at one o’clock in the afternoon – like the Italians, that spends its evenings in opera-boxes – like the French, that amuses itself of nights with eau sucrée and intrigue – cannot, believe me, understand Society rightly. I love and admire my nation for its good sense, its manliness, its friendliness, its morality in the main – and these, I take it, are all expressed in that noble institution, the dinner.
The dinner is the happy end of the Briton’s day. We work harder than the other nations of the earth. We do more, we live more in our time, than Frenchmen or Germans. Every great man amongst us likes his dinner, and takes to it kindly. I could mention the most august names of poets, statesmen, philosophers, historians, judges, and divines, who are great at the dinner-table as in the field, the closet, the senate, or the bench. Gibbon mentions that he wrote the first two volumes of his history whilst a placeman in London, lodging in St James’s, going to the House of Commons, to the Club, and to dinner every day. The man flourishes under that generous and robust regimen; the healthy energies of society are kept up by it; our friendly intercourse is maintained; our intellect ripens with the good cheer, and throws off surprising crops, like the fields about Edinburgh, under the influence of that admirable liquid, Claret. The best wines are sent to this country therefore; for no other deserves them as ours does.
I am a diner-out, and live in London. I protest, as I look back at the men and dinners I have seen in the last week, my mind is filled with manly respect, and pleasure. How good they have been! how admirable the entertainments! how worthy the men!
Let me, without divulging names, and with a cordial gratitude, mention a few of those whom I have met and who have all done their duty.
Sir, I have sat at table with a great, a world-renowned statesman. I watched him during the progress of the banquet – I am at liberty to say that he enjoyed it like a man.
On another day, it was a celebrated literary character. It was beautiful to see him at his dinner: cordial and generous, jovial and kindly, the great author enjoyed himself as the great statesman – may he long give us good books and good dinners!
Yet another day, and I sat opposite to a Right Reverend Bishop. My Lord, I was pleased to see good thing after good thing disappear before you; and think no man ever better became that rounded episcopal apron. How amiable he was! how kind! He put water into his wine. Let us respect the moderation of the Church.
And then the men learned in the law: how they dine! what hospitality, what splendour, what comfort, what wine! As we walked away very gently in the moonlight, only three days since, from the–’s, a friend of my youth and myself, we could hardly speak for gratitude: ‘Dear sir,’ we breathed fervently, ‘ask us soon again.’ One never has too much at those perfect banquets – no hideous headaches ensue, or horrid resolutions about adopting Revalenta Arabica for the future – but contentment with all the world, light slumbering, joyful waking to grapple with the morrow’s work. Ah, dear Bob, those lawyers have great merits. There is a dear old judge at whose family table if I could see you seated, my desire in life would be pretty nearly fulfilled. If you make yourself agreeable there, you will be in a fair way to get on in the world. But you are a youth still. Youths go to balls: men go to dinners.
Doctors, again, notoriously eat well; when my excellent friend Sangrado takes a bumper, and saying, with a shrug and a twinkle of his eye, ‘Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor’ tosses off the wine, I always ask the butler for a glass of that bottle.
The inferior clergy, likewise, dine very much and well. I don’t know when I have been better entertained, as far as creature comforts go, than by men of very Low Church principles; and one of the very best repasts that ever I saw in my life was at Darlington, given by a Quaker.
Some of the best wine in London is given to his friends by a poet of my acquaintance. All artists are notoriously fond of dinners, and invite you, but not so profusely. Newspaper-editors delight in dinners on Saturdays, and give them, thanks to the present position of Literature, very often and good. Dear Bob, I have seen the mahoganies of many men.
Every evening between seven and eight o’clock, I like to look at the men dressed for dinner, perambulating the western districts of our city. I like to see the smile on their countenances lighted up with an indescribable self-importance and good-humour; the askance glances which they cast at the little street-boys and foot-passengers who eye their shiny boots; the dainty manner in which they trip over the pavement on those boots, eschewing the mud-pools and dirty crossings; the refreshing whiteness of their linen; the coaxing twiddle which they give to the ties of their white chokers – the caress of a fond parent to an innocent child.
I like walking myself. Those who go in cabs or broughams, I have remarked, have not the same radiant expression which the pedestrian exhibits. A man in his own brougham has anxieties about the stepping of his horse, or the squaring of the groom’s elbows, or a doubt whether Jones’s turn-out is not better; or whether something is not wrong in the springs; or whether he shall have the brougham out if the night is rainy. They always look tragical behind the glasses. A cab diner-out has commonly some cares, lest his sense of justice should be injured by the overcharge of the driver (these fellows are not uncommonly exorbitant in their demands upon gentlemen whom they set down at good houses); lest the smell of tobacco left by the last occupants of the vehicle (five medical students, let us say, who have chartered the vehicle, and smoked cheroots from the London University to the playhouse in the Haymarket) should infest the clothes of Tom Lavender who is going to Lady Rosemary’s; lest straws should stick unobserved to the glutinous lustre of his boots – his shiny ones, and he should appear in Dives’s drawing-room like a poet with a tenui avenâ, or like Mad Tom in the play. I hope, my dear Bob, if a straw should ever enter a drawing-room in the wake of your boot, you will not be much disturbed in mind. Hark ye, in confidence; I have seen – * in a hack-cab. There is no harm in employing one. There is no harm in anything natural, any more.
I cannot help here parenthetically relating a story which occurred in my own youth, in the year 1815, at the time when I first made my own entrée into society (for everything must have a beginning, Bob; and though we have been gentlemen long before the Conqueror, and have always consorted with gentlemen, yet we had not always attained that haute volée of fashion which has distinguished some of us subsequently); I recollect, I say, in 1815, when the Marquis of Sweetbread was good enough to ask me and the late Mr Ruffles to dinner, to meet Prince Schwartzenberg and the Hetman Platoff. Ruffles was a man a good deal about town in those days, and certainly in very good society.
I was myself a young one, and thought Ruffles was rather inclined to patronize me: which I did not like. ‘I would have you to know, Mr Ruffles,’ thought I, ‘that, after all, a gentleman can but be a gentleman; that though we Browns have no handles to our names, we are quite as well-bred as some folks who possess those ornaments’ – and in fine I determined to give him a lesson. So when he called for me in the hackney-coach at my lodgings in Swallow Street, and we had driven under the porte-cochère of Sweetbread House, where two tall and powdered domestics in the uniform of the Sweetbreads, viz. a spinach-coloured coat, with waistcoat and the rest of delicate yellow or melted-butter colour, opened the doors of the hall – what do you think, sir, I did? In the presence of these gentlemen, who were holding on at the door, I offered to toss up with Ruffles, heads or tails, who should pay for the coach; and then purposely had a dispute with the poor Jarvey about the fare. Ruffles’s face of agony during this transaction, I shall never forget. Sir, it was like the Laocoön. Drops of perspiration trembled on his pallid brow, and he flung towards me looks of imploring terror that would have melted an ogre. A better fellow than Ruffles never lived – he is dead long since, and I don’t mind owning to this harmless little deceit.
A person of some note – a favourite Snob of mine – I am told, when he goes to dinner, adopts what he considers a happy artifice, and sends his cab away at the corner of the street; so that the gentleman in livery may not behold its number, or that the lord with whom he dines, and about whom he is always talking, may not be supposed to know that Mr Smith came in a hack-cab.
A man who is troubled with a shame like this, Bob, is unworthy of any dinner at all. Such a man must needs be a sneak and a humbug, anxious about the effect which he is to produce: uneasy in his mind: a donkey in a lion’s skin: a small pretender – distracted by doubts and frantic terrors of what is to come next. Such a man can be no more at ease in his chair at dinner than a man is in the fauteuil at the dentist’s (unless indeed he go to the admirable Mr Gilbert in Suffolk Street, who is dragged into this essay for the benefit of mankind alone, and who, I vow, removes a grinder with so little pain, that all the world should be made aware of him) – a fellow, I say, ashamed of the original from which he sprung, of the cab in which he drives, awkward, therefore affected and unnatural, can never hope or deserve to succeed in society.
