Hunt, Henry, 1773-1835; Social reformers -- Great Britain -- Biography
into the drawing-room to his daughters. In the course of our walk he
professed a very sincere and warm friendship for me, and promised himself
a world of pleasure in my society; and he frankly and unblushingly
informed me, that he had brought with him from Oxford a bad venereal
complaint, which, he added, was most unfortunate, as he was fearful that
he should inoculate all the pretty damsels belonging to his new flock,
which would be a _cursed Bore_.
I premised by saying that I should be very brief, but I fear that some of
my moral male, as well as all my female, readers will think that as to
this young Clergyman of the Church of England I have already said too
much; but sorry am I to declare that in the little which I have said, I
have drawn his character too faithfully. He lived but a short time; having
soon fallen a victim to his profligate course of life. He was little more
than a year, I think, the Pastor of the Parish, and he administered the
sacrament, and performed all the other offices of the Curate, when the
effects of his drinking did not interfere with it, and during this time he
always lodged at the public house. This was a sad example for the people
of the parish! The young farmers were already too much addicted to
drinking, but they had been heretofore kept in check, and under some sort
of controul, by the admonition and by the example of their late Clergyman,
who, during all the years that he had resided there, was never known to be
intoxicated, or in any way, disguised in liquor. To be sure he was a
_Jacobin_, but he was, nevertheless, a _sober, moral, amiable Man_; and,
although he was no bigot, he most strictly, regularly, and rigidly
performed the sacred duty he had undertaken, with great satisfaction to
his parishioners, and with great credit to himself, as a Man, a Clergyman,
and a Christian. But, during the life of his successor, they had no
Jacobin; he was a furious Church and Kingman, although a complete free
thinker over his cups, and would get drunk and roar God save the King with
any drunken loyalist in the district; and, to shew his zeal in this way,
he entered and served as a private, and dressed in the uniform, of the
Everly troop of yeomanry Cavalry just raised. He was, however, too
enervated and too emaciated to acquire any knowledge of the military
exercise; and, what was rather remarkable, there was another young sprig
of the Church to keep him in countenance, who was also a private in the
same troop of yeomanry. Although I sometimes made one of the bacchanalian
party of our Curate, yet I felt most severely the difference between this
society and that of Mr. Carrington.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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