The Essays of "George Eliot": CompleteEliot, George
History
The Essays of "George Eliot": Complete
Eliot, George
Literature -- History and criticism
two uncharged pistols; the last was the doctor’s man, whose uncombed
hair so resembled the mane of the horse he rode, one could not help
imagining they were of kin, and wishing, for the honor of the family,
that they had had one comb betwixt them. On his head was a velvet
cap, much resembling a black saucepan, and on his side hung a little
basket. At last we arrived at the King’s Head, where the loyalty of
the doctor induced him to alight; and then, knight-errant-like, he
took his damsels from off their palfreys, and courteously handed us
into the inn.’ . . . The party returned to the Wells; and ‘the silver
Cynthia held up her lamp in the heavens’ the while. ‘The night
silenced all but our divine doctor, who sometimes uttered things fit
to be spoken in a season when all nature seems to be hushed and
hearkening. I followed, gathering wisdom as I went, till I found, by
my horse’s stumbling, that I was in a bad road, and that the blind
was leading the blind. So I placed my servant between the doctor and
myself; which he not perceiving, went on in a most philosophical
strain, to the great admiration of my poor clown of a servant, who,
not being wrought up to any pitch of enthusiasm, nor making any
answer to all the fine things he heard, the doctor, wondering I was
dumb, and grieving I was so stupid, looked round and declared his
surprise.’”
Young’s oddity and absence of mind are gathered from other sources
besides these stories of Mrs. Montagu’s, and gave rise to the report that
he was the original of Fielding’s “Parson Adams;” but this Croft denies,
and mentions another Young, who really sat for the portrait, and who, we
imagine, had both more Greek and more genuine simplicity than the poet.
His love of chatting with Colley Cibber was an indication that the old
predilection for the stage survived, in spite of his emphatic contempt
for “all joys but joys that never can expire;” and the production of “The
Brothers,” at Drury Lane in 1753, after a suppression of fifteen years,
was perhaps not entirely due to the expressed desire to give the proceeds
to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The author’s profits
were not more than £400—in those days a disappointing sum; and Young, as
we learn from his friend Richardson, did not make this the limit of his
donation, but gave a thousand guineas to the Society. “I had some talk
with him,” says Richardson, in one of his letters, “about this great
action. ‘I always,’ said he, ‘intended to do something handsome for the
Society. Had I deferred it to my demise, I should have given away my
son’s money. All the world are inclined to pleasure; could I have given
myself a greater by disposing of the sum to a different use, I should
have done it.’” Surely he took his old friend Richardson for “Lorenzo!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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