The person of whom too slight a description is here given, was educated at Eton, and afterwards at Oxford. He was called to the bar, and filled for some time a dignified station in one of our foreign dependencies. He has, at different times, published various works, all of which are in the highest degree honourable to his literary reputation. He is, or was, a good scholar, a very respectable lawyer, and had obtained considerable proficiency in the Oriental languages. He was, moreover, remarkably well versed in the modern Greek. As to worldly matters, he certainly played his cards well with respect to himself, and has proved to others also no contemptible patron. All have their infirmities. It is imputed to him, that through fear of being held up to public animadversion, by one great political hippopotamos, he occasionally acquiesced in opinions, which he reprobated, and paid obsequious attention to one, whom in his heart he detested. It has also been said, that with a little exertion he might have rendered effectual service to some who fought with him with equal resolution, and who were exposed to equal danger, under the same honourable standard, but that his benevolence ended where it began—namely, at home. He was, however, in every particular, well qualified to be a member of the society, the component individuals of which are here imperfectly delineated. Davus sum, non Œdipus. Deum qui non summum putet Cui in manu sit quem esse dementem velit Quem sapere—quem sanari—quem in morbum injici. CHAPTER XXIV. Another considerable personage belonged to this Symposium, whose entrance into life was marked with promises, which he subsequently failed to fulfil. He had every advantage of family, education, connection, and situation; he had considerable learning, and was by no means destitute of talent. He was of very elegant and agreeable manners, and must necessarily have been a very acceptable member of any society, which assembled for the purpose of indulging enlightened and interesting conversation. But he was appointed to some diplomatic situation abroad, and he continued for many years absent from England. Whether he had put the poisoned chalice of infidelity to his lips before his departure, is uncertain; but he appeared to have employed his leisure in searching for objections and arguments, as they related to Scripture, which had been so often refuted, that they were considered by the learned and the wise, as almost exploded. This gentleman, however, collected, and made a book of them, which certainly has done no honour to his reputation, in any sense whatever. He was, moreover, a poet, but here also he discovered a perverted and fantastical taste, having dramatized one of the most exceptionable and unnatural tales in the whole collection of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.