Days with Sir Roger De CoverleySteele, Richard, Sir
General
Days with Sir Roger De Coverley
Steele, Richard, Sir
English essays
This extraordinary letter, and message that accompanied it, made me
very curious to know the character and quality of the gentleman who sent
them; which I found to be as follows. Will Wimble is younger brother to
a baronet, and descended of the ancient family of the Wimbles. He is now
between forty and fifty; but being bred to no business and born to no
estate, he generally lives with his elder brother as superintendent of
his game. He hunts a pack of dogs better than any man in the country,
and is very famous for finding out a hare. He is extremely well versed
in all the little handicrafts of an idle man: he makes a Mayfly to a
miracle; and furnishes the whole country with angle-rods. As he is a
good-natur'd officious fellow, and very much esteem'd upon account of
his family, he is a welcome guest at every house, and keeps up a
good correspondence among all the gentlemen about him. He carries a
tulip-root in his pocket from one to another, or exchanges a puppy
between a couple of friends that live perhaps in the opposite sides of
the county. Will is a particular favourite of all the young heirs, whom
he frequently obliges with a net that he has weaved, or a setting-dog
that he has made himself. He now and then presents a pair of garters of
his own knitting to their mothers or sisters; and raises a great deal of
mirth among them, by enquiring as often as he meets them how they wear!
These gentlemen-like manufactures and obliging little humours make Will
the darling of the country.
Sir Roger was proceeding in the character of him, when we saw him make
up to us with two or three hazel-twigs in his hand that he had cut in
Sir Roger's woods, as he came through them, in his way to the house.
I was very much pleased to observe on one side the hearty and sincere
welcome with which Sir Roger received him, and on the other, the secret
joy which his guest discover'd at sight of the good old Knight. After
the first salutes were over, Will desired Sir Roger to lend him one of
his servants to carry a set of shuttle-cocks he had with him in a little
box to a lady that lived about a mile off, to whom it seems he had
promised such a present for above this half year. Sir Roger's back
was no sooner turned but honest Will began to tell me of a large
cock-pheasant that he had sprung in one of the neighbouring woods,
with two or three other adventures of the same nature. Odd and uncommon
characters are the game I looked for, and most delight in; for which
reason I was as much pleased with the novelty of the person that talked
to me, as he could be for his life with the springing of a pheasant, and
therefore listen'd to him with more than ordinary attention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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