Mr. Devereux helped me to throw off this dangerous contagion, before it did me any injury. He happened to stay in the room with me a quarter of an hour after the other gentlemen went to dress. Though not often disposed to conversation with a stranger, yet I was won by this gentleman’s easy address: he politely talked of the English fashionable world, with which he knew that I was well acquainted; I, with equal politeness, recurred to the Irish great world: we fastened together upon Lord O’Toole, who took us to Dublin Castle; and I began to express my regret that I had not yet been at the Irish court, and that I had not earlier in life made myself of political consequence. “Ambition,” said I, “might help to keep a man awake and alive; all common pleasures have long since ceased to interest me--they really cannot make me stir.” “My lord,” said Mr. Devereux, “you would do better to sit or lie still all your life than to toil for such vain objects. ‘Full little knowest thou that hast not tried, What hell it is in sueing long to bide;’ Your lordship may remember Spenser’s description of that hell?” “Not exactly,” said I, unwilling to lower the good opinion this gentleman seemed to have taken for granted of my literature. He took Spenser’s poems out of the book-case, and I actually rose from my seat to read the passage; for what trouble will not even the laziest of mortals take to preserve the esteem of one by whom he sees that he is over-valued. I read the following ten lines without yawning! “Full little knowest thou that hast not tried, What hell it is in sueing long to bide; To lose good days, that might be better spent, To waste long nights in pensive discontent, To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow, To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow, To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares, To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs, To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.” “Very strong, indeed,” said I, with a competent air, as if used to judge of poetry. “And it comes with still greater force, when we consider by whom it was written. A man, you know, my lord, who had been secretary to a lord lieutenant.”