flight omiffion piques! Surely we should guard our paffions as we would any other combuftibles, and not spread open the inflammable magazine to catch the first spark, that may blow it and ourselves into the air.

Tom Tinder is one of these touchy blockheads, whom no body can endure: The fellow has not a fingle plea in life for his ill temper; he does not want money, is not married, has a great deal of health to spare and never once felt the slightest twinge of the gout. His eyes no fooner open to the morning light than he begins to quarrel with the weather; it rains, and he wanted to ride; it is funshine, and he meant to go a fishing; he would hunt only when it is a frost, and never thinks of skaiting but in open weather; in short the wind is never in the right quarter with this tefty fellow; and though I could excuse a man for being a little out of humour with an eafterly wind, Tom Tinder shall box the whole compass, and never fet his needle to a single point of good humour upon the face of it.

He now rings his bell for his fervant to begin the operation of dreffing him, a task more ticklish than to wait upon the toilette of a monkey: As Tom shifts his fervants about as regularly as he does his shirt, 'tis all the world to nothing if

the poor devil does not ftumble at starting ; or if by happy inspiration he should begin with the right foot foremost, Tom has another inspiration ready at command to quarrel with him for not fetting forward with the left: To a certainty then the razor wants ftrapping, the shaving water is fmoaked, and the devil's in the fellow for a dunce, booby and blockhead.

Tom now comes down to breakfast, and though the favage has the ftomach of an oftrich, there is not a morfel paffes down his blafphem ing throat without a damn to digeft it; 'twould be a lefs dangerous task to serve in the morning mefs to a fafting bear. He then walks forth. into his garden; there he does not meet a plant, which his ill-humour does not engraft with the bitter fruit of curfing; the wafps have pierced his nectarines; the caterpillars have raised contributions upon his cabbages, and the infernal blackbirds have eaten up all his cherries: Tom's foul is not large enough to allow the denizens of creation a taste of Nature's gifts, though he furfeits with the fuperabundance of her bounty.

He next takes a turn about his farm; there vexation upon vexation croffes him at every corner: The fly, a plague upon't, has got amongst

his turnips; the fmut has feized his wheat and his fheep are falling down with the rot: All this is the fault of his bailiff, and at his door the blame lies with a proportionable quantity of bleffings to recommend it. He finds a few dry fticks pickt out of his hedges, and he blasts all the poor in his neighbourhood for a fet of thieves, pilferers and vagabonds. He meets one of his tenants by the way, and he has a petition for a new gate to his farm-yard, or some repairs to his dove-house, or it may be a new threshing-floor to his barn-Hell and fury! there is no end to the demands of thefe curfed farmers-His ftomach rifes at the requeft, and he turns afide speechlefs with rage, and in this humour pays a vifit to his mafons and carpenters, who are at work upon a building he is adding to his offices: Here his choler instead of fubfiding only flames more furiously, for the idle rafcals have done nothing; fome have been making holiday, others have gone to the fair at the next town, and the mafter workman has fallen from the fcaffold, and keeps his bed with the bruifes: Every devil is conjured up from the bottomlefs pit to come on earth and confound thefe dilatory mifcreants; and now let him go to his dinner with what ftomach he may. If an humble parfon or depen

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dant coufin expects a peaceful meal at his table, he may as well fit down to feed with Thyeftes or the Centaurs. After a meal of mifery and a glass of wine, which ten to one but the infernal butler has clouded in the decanting, he is fummoned to a game at back-gammon: The parfon throws fize-ace, and in a few more casts covers all his points; the devil's in the dice! Tom makes a blot, and the parfon hits it; he takes up man after man, all his points are full and Tom is gammoned paft redemption-Can flesh and blood bear this? Was ever such a run of luck? The dice-box is flapt down with a vengeance; the tables ring with the deafening crash, the parfon ftands aghaft, and Tom ftamps the floor in the phrenzy of paffion-Despicable pas fion! miferable dependant!

Where is his next refource? the parfon has fled the pit; the back-gammon table is closed; no chearful neighbour knocks at his unfocial gate; filence and night and folitude are his melancholy inmates; his boiling bosom labours like a turbid fea after the winds are lulled; fhame ftares him in the face; confcience plucks at his heart, and to divert his own tormenting thoughts, he calls in thofe of another person, no matter whom the first idle author that stands next to his

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hand he takes up a book; 'tis a volume of comedies; he opens it at random; 'tis all alike to him where he begins; all our poets put together are not worth a halter; he ftumbles by mere chance upon The Choleric Man; 'twas one to a thousand he should strike upon that blasted playWhat an infernal title! What execrable nonsense! What a canting, preaching puppy of an author!-Away goes the poet with his play and half a dozen better poets than himself bound up in the fame lucklefs volume, the innocent fufferers for his offence.

Tom now fits forlorn, difgufted, without a friend living or dead to chear him, gnawing his own heart for want of other diet to feed his fpleen upon: At length he flinks into a comfortless bed; damns his fervant as he draws the curtains round him, drops afleep and dreams of the devil.

Major Manlove is a near neighbour, but no intimate of Tom Tinder's: With the enjoyments, that result from health, the major is but rarely bleft, for a body-wound, which he received in battle, is apt upon certain changes of the climate to vifit him with acute pains. He is married to one of the best of women; but the too has impaired her health by nurfing him

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