INTRODUCTION

THOUGH the world is but little concerned to know in what situation the author of any performance that is offered to its perusal may be, yet I believe it is generally solicitous to learn some circumstances relating to him; for my own part, I have always experienced this desire in myself, and read the advertisement at the beginning, and the postscript at the end of a book, if they contain any information of that sort, with a kind of melancholy inquietude about the fate of him in whose company, as it were, I have passed some harmless hours, and whose sentiments have been unbosomed to me with the openness of a friend.

The life of him who has had an opportunity of presenting to the eye of the public the following tale, though sufficiently checkered with vicissitude, has been spent in a state of obscurity, the recital of which could but little excite admiration, or gratify curiosity. The manner of his procuring the story contained in the following sheets, is all he thinks himself entitled to relate.

After some wanderings at that time of life which is most subject to wandering, I had found an opportunity of revisiting the scenes of my earlier attachments, and returned to my native spot with that tender emotion, which the heart, that can be moved at all, will naturally feel on approaching it. The remembrance of my infant days, like the fancied vibration of pleasant sounds in the ear, was still alive in my mind; and I flew to find out the marks by which even inanimate things were to be known, as the friends of my youth, not forgotten, though long unseen, nor lessened in my estimation, from the pride of refinement, or the comparison of experience.

In the shade of an ancient tree, that centred a circle of elms, at the end of the village where I was born, I found my old acquaintance, Jack Ryland. He was gathering moss with one hand, while the other held a flannel bag, containing earth worms, to be used as bait in angling. On seeing me, Ryland dropped

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his moss on the ground, and ran with all the warmth of friendship to embrace me. My dear Tom," said he, "how happy I am to see you! you have travelled, no doubt, a woundy long way since we parted.-You find me in the old way here.-I believe they have but a sorry notion of sport in Italy.—While I think on't, look on this minnow; I'll be hanged if the sharpesteyed trout in the river can know it from the natural. It was but yesterday now-You remember the cross-tree pool, just below the parsonage there I hooked him, played him half an hour by the clock, and landed him at last as far down as the church-way ford. As for his size-Lord! how unlucky it is that I have not my landing net here! for now I recollect that I marked his length on the outside of the pole; but you shall see it some other time."

Let not my reader be impatient at my friend Ryland's ha rangue. I give it him, because I would have characters develope themselves. To throw, however, some farther light upon

Ryland's :

He was first cousin to a gentleman who possessed a considerable estate in our county; born to no fortune, and not much formed by nature for acquiring one, he found pretty early that he should never be rich, but that he might possibly be happy ; and happiness to him was obtained without effort, because it was drawn from sources which it required little exertion to supply. Trifles were the boundaries of his desire, and their attainment the goal of his felicity. A certain neatness in all those little arts in which the soul has no share, an immoderate love of sport, and a still more immoderate love of reciting its progress, with the addition of one faculty which has some small connexion with letters, to wit, a remarkable memory for puzzles and enigmas, made up his character; and he enjoyed a privilege uncommon to the happy, that no one envied the means by which he attained what every one pursues.

I interrupted his narrative by some inquiries about my former acquaintance in the village; for Ryland was the recorder of the place, and could have told the names, families, relations, and intermarriages of the parish, with much more accuracy than the register.

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Alack-a-day!" said Jack, "there have been many changes among us since you left this: here has died the old gauger Wilson, as good a cricket player as ever handled a bat; Rooke, at The Salutation, is gone too; and his wife has left the parish and settled in London, where, I am told, she keeps a gin shop in some street they call Southwark ; and the poor parson, whom you were so intimate with, the worthy old Annesly ;"—he looked piteously towards the churchyard, and a tear trickled down

his cheek. I understand you," said I, "the good man is dead!"—"Ah! there is more than you think about us death," answered Jack; "he died of a broken heart!" I could make no reply but by an ejaculation, and Ryland accompanied it with another tear; for though he commonly looked but on the surface of things, yet Ryland had a heart to feel.

"In the middle of yon clump of alders," said he, "you may remember a small house, that was once farmer Higgins's. It is now occupied by a gentlewoman of the name of Wistanly, who was formerly a sort of servant companion to Sir Thomas Sindall's mother, the widow of Sir William. Her mistress, who died some years ago, left her an annuity, and that house for life, where she has lived ever since. I am told she knows more of Annesly's affairs than any other body; but she is so silent and shy, that I could never get a word from her on the subject. She is reckoned a wonderful scholar by the folks of the village; and you, who are a man of reading, might perhaps be a greater favorite with her. 'If you choose it, I shall introduce you to her immediately." I accepted his offer, and we went to her house together.

We found her sitting in a little parlor, fitted up in a taste much superior to what might have been expected from the appearance of the house, with some shelves, on which I observed several of the most classical English and French authors. She rose to receive us with something in her manner greatly above her seeming rank. Jack introduced me as an acquaintance of her deceased friend, Mr. Annesly. “Then, Sir,” said she, “you knew a man who had few fellows!" lifting her eyes gently upwards. The tender solemnity of her look answered the very movement which the remembrance had awakened in my soul; and I made no other reply than by a tear. She seemed to take it in good part, and we met on that ground like old friends, who had much to ask, and much to be answered.

When we were going away, she begged to have a moment's conversation with me alone; Ryland left us together.

"If I am not deceived, Sir," said she, " in the opinion I have formed of you, your feelings are very different from those of Mr. Ryland, and indeed of most of my neighbors in the village. You seem to have had a peculiar interest in the fate of that worthiest of men, Mr. Annesly. The history of that life of purity which he led, of that calamity by which it was shortened, might not be an unpleasing, though a melancholy recital to you; but in this box, which stands on the table by me, is contained a series of letters and papers, which, if you will take the trouble of reading them, will save me the task of recounting his sufferings. You will find many passages which do not indeed relate to it; but, as

they are often the entertainment of my leisure hours, I have marked the most interesting parts on the margin. This deposite, Sir, though its general importance be small, my affection for my departed friend makes me consider as a compliment, and I commit it to you, as to one in whose favor I have conceived a prepossession from that very cause."

Those letters and papers were the basis of what I now offer to the public. Had it been my intention to make a book, I might have published them entire; and I am persuaded, notwithstanding Mrs. Wistanly's remark, that no part of them would have been found more foreign to the general drift of this volume, than many that have got admittance into similar collections. But I have chosen rather to throw them into the form of a narrative, and contented myself with transcribing such reflections as naturally arise from the events, and such sentiments as the situations alone appear to have excited. There are indeed many suppletory facts, which could not have been found in this collection of Mrs. Wistanly's. These I was at some pains to procure through other channels. How I was enabled to procure them, the reader may conceive, if his patience can hold out to the end of the story. To account for that now, would delay its commencement, and anticipate its conclusion; for both which effects this introductory chapter may have already been subject to reprehension.

THE

MAN OF THE WORLD.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

In which are some particulars previous to the commencement of the main story.

RICHARD ANNESLY was the only child of a wealthy tradesman in London, who, from the experience of that profit which his business afforded himself, was anxious it should descend to his son. Unfortunately the young man had acquired a certain train of ideas which were totally averse to that line of life which his father had marked out for him. There is a degree of sentiment, which, in the bosom of a man destined to the drudgery of the world, is the source of endless disgust. Of this, young Annesly was unluckily possessed; and as he foresaw, or thought he foresaw, that it would not only endanger his success, but take from the enjoyment of prosperity, supposing it attained, he declined following that road which his father had smoothed for his progress; and, at the risk of those temporal advantages which the old gentleman's displeasure on this occasion might deny him, entered into the service of the church, and retired to the country on one of the smallest endowments she has to bestow.

That feeling which prevents the acquisition of wealth, is formed for the support of poverty. The contentment of the poor, I had almost said their pride, buoys up the spirit against the depression of adversity, and gives to our very wants the appearance of enjoyment.

Annesly looked on happiness as confined to the sphere of sequestered life. The pomp of greatness, the pleasures of the affluent, he considered as only productive of turbulence, disquiet, and remorse; and thanked Heaven for having placed him in his own little shed, which, in his opinion, was the residence of pure and lasting felicity.

With this view of things his father's ideas did by no means